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• COPYRSGHT DEPOSIT. 



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WITH KITCHENER TO KHARTUM 




stereoscopic Co., London 



WITH KITCHENER 
TO KHARTUM 



.%^ 



g/ws^^eevens 

AUTHOR OF 

"EGYPT IN 1898," "THE LAND OF THE DOLLAR," "WITH 

THE CONQUERING TURK," ETC. 



WITH MAPS AND PLANS 




NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD & COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



^ 






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0sy^ 



Copyright, 1898, 191 5 
By Dodd, Mead & Company 



JAN 30 1915 
©CU391742 



A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 
LORD KITCHENER 

At the, age of twenty-one Horatio Herbert 
Kitcliener, a private in the Sixth Battalion of the 
French Mobile Guard (attached to the Second Army 
of the Loire) under General Chanzy, fought on the 
side of France against Germany ; at the age of sixty- 
four, Earl Kitchener of Khartum, British Secretary 
for War, with two million men at his disposal, is 
again fighting against Germany on the side of 
France. In 1871, Kitchener had enlisted in the 
French army without the permission of the British 
army officials ; in 1914, he entered the European war 
with the acclaim and enthusiasm of the entire British 
nation. 

Kitchener was born September twenty-second, 
1850, at Crotter House, Ballylongford, County 
Kerry, Ireland, the eldest son of Lieutenant Colonel 
Henry Horatio Kitchener, of Leicestershire, and 
Anne Frances, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Chevallier, 
of Aspall Hall, Suffolk. He was educated at the 
Royal Military Academy, "Woolwich. After his ex- 
perience in the Franco-Prussian War, where he par- 
ticipated in the disastrous retreat after the defeat 
at Le Mans, he entered the British Army in 1871 as 

V 



VI LIFE SKETCH OF LORD KITCHEKER 

Second Lieutenant of Royal Engineers. As a mem- 
ber of this corps, he was engaged from 1874 until 
1882 on survey work and civil organization in Pal- 
estine and Cyprus, with a brief interval of resi- 
dence at Erzerum, as Vice Consul of Anatolia from 
1879 to 1880. When the new Egyptian cavalry was 
formed, Kitchener offered himself for the service, 
and it is one of the little ironies of history that 
he was nearly rejected because he rode so badly. 
But for a complacent examiner, he would probably 
have remained with the engineers, waiting for a 
pension and a green old age. As it was, Sir Eve- 
lyn Wood appointed him as a volunteer, in 1882, 
to one of the two mayorships of Egyptian cavalry; 
and it was in 1884, as Quarter Master General and 
Deputy Assistant Adjutant, that Kitchener was ac- 
tively engaged in the vain attempt to keep open 
communication for the Nile expedition that was to 
relie^i^ General Charles George Gordon at Khartum. 
The following year he was sent as a commissioner 
in the delimitation of Zanzibar as a British pro- 
tectorate. On the successful performance of this 
duty he was brevetted Lieutenant Colonel, and re- 
ceived various decorations, and upon his return to 
Egypt he became Pasha in the native army, and 
for two years he was governor of Suakin. Through- 
out his service in North Africa, Kitchener's inti- 
mate knowledge of Arabic was one of his greatest 



LIFE SKETCH OF LORD KITCHENER Vll 

assets. In April, 1888, he attained the rank of 
Colonel in the British Army, and in December of 
that year, while leading the troops at the battle 
of Handub, was seriously wounded. He received 
special mention in the dispatches, and was created 
C. B. for his part in the action at Toski under 
General Grenfell (1889) ; after the conclusion of 
the Eastern Sudan campaign he was engaged for 
four years as Adjutant General and second in com- 
mand of the Egyptian Army, and also as inspector 
general of police; and in 1892 he was made Sirdar 
(commander) of the Egyptian forces, with the 
British rank of Brigadier General. During sev- 
eral years he was steadily engaged in completing 
preparations for the recovery of the lost provinces 
of Upper Egypt, which had been under Mahdist 
rule since 1883, The campaign commenced in 1896 
with the capture of Dongola, which brought Kitch- 
ener the rank of Major General and the K. C, B. 
With the overthrow of Khalifa, the Mahdi's suc- 
cessor, at the battle of Omdurman, and the capture 
of Khartum on September 2, 1898, he completed the 
defeat of the Dervishes. 

As an illustration of Kitchener's determined 
methods and calculating, merciless will, it is said 
that he desecrated the grave of the Mahdi, and 
threw the head of the "prophet" into the river lest 
his grave should become a shrine, and the site of 



Vlll LIFE SKETCH OP LORD KITCHENER 

future rebellion. It was also during this period 
that occurred that memorable scene at Fashoda 
when he met Major Marchand, and war between 
England and France trembled in the balance. 
Marchand has recorded the dialogue — polite, diplo- 
matic, but fraught with immense consequence to 
the nations represented. The French flag floated 
over the fort, but the Sirdar said that the Egyptian 
flag must float in its place. The Major was firm; 
the Sirdar firm also. Beneath the politeness was 
the clash of two nations. The conversation ended 
with a whiskey and soda, and the Egyptian flag 
now flies over the fort of Fashoda, 

On his return to England, Kitchener received a 
peerage with the title Baron Kitchener of Khartum 
and of Aspall, Suffolk, and through the generosity 
of Parliament a grant of thirty thousand pounds. 
During this time he raised one hundred thousand 
poun(ig to found at Khartum a college in memory 
of General Gordon. 

Shortly after the outbreak of the Boer War, 
Kitchener was sent as Chief of Staff to Lord Eob- 
erts, newly appointed Commander in Chief in 
South Africa, and it was in a large measure due 
to him that the British Army achieved success 
against the hitherto victorious Boer generals. His 
first duty was in maintaining the lines of communi- 
cation with Cape Colony, where he was in frequent 



LIFE SKETCH OF LOED KITCHENER IX 

contact with the Boer contingents, and on one occa- 
sion narrowly escaped capture at the hands of 
General De Wet. On December, 1900, Field Mar- 
shal Roberts returned to England, and Kitchener 
assumed command, and in the same year defeated 
the Boers under De Wet. Two years later, on May 
31, 1902, Kitchener's methods resulted in the ac- 
ceptance of peace conditions by the Boers. For his 
service he was created Viscount with a grant of 
fifty thousand pounds, and was admitted to the 
Order of Merit. Upon his return to England he 
received a great ovation, as well as the thanks of 
Parliament. In 1902 he was appointed Commander 
in Chief of the Army of India, and it is in this 
position that his most notable executive work was 
accomplished. He effected a complete reorganiza- 
tion of the Indian Army, greatly increasing its 
efficiency and the economy of its management. 
During 1905, in pursuance of his scheme to obtain 
a larger share of autonomy for the head of the 
army, he came into conflict with the Viceroy, Lord 
Curzon. Lord Curzon stood for the civil control 
of the army, while Kitchener believed that this dual 
control was mischievous; and there is no doubt 
that the military adviser on the Viceroy's council 
has steadily encroached on the authority of the 
Commander in Chief. There have been few per- 
sonal conflicts of recent years so dramatic as that 



X LIFE SKETCH OF LORD KITCHENER 

in which the masterful purpose of Kitchener and 
the pride of Curzon came to grips before the judg- 
ment seat of Lord Middleton. The final decision 
was in favor of the soldier and Lord Curzon forth- 
with resigned his post. For seven years Kitchener 
remained at his work in India, and, after his resig- 
nation in 1909, it was announced that he had been 
appointed to succeed the Duke of Connaught as 
Commander in Chief of the Mediterranean forces, 
and about the same time he was created Field Mar- 
shal. During this same year he visited ' China and 
Japan (where he received the Order of the Rising 
Sun), and as a member of the Committee of Im- 
perial Defence, he continued his travels to Australia 
and New Zealand, where he spent some time inspect- 
ing colonial forces and promoting plans for the 
defence of the Empire. On his return he passed 
through the United States and inspected the bar- 
racks ^t West Point ; these he pronounced superior 
to anything he had seen in Europe. In July, 1911, 
he was appointed British consul general and agent 
in Egypt, succeeding Sir Eldon Gorst, whose tenure 
of office, while marked with increased freedom for 
native aspirations in Egypt, was none the less a 
failure from the British point of view. The com- 
mand of British troops in the Mediterranean was 
also . entrusted to Lord Kitchener at Cairo. Called 
upon to crush the growing disaffection of the Egyp- 



LIFE SKETCH OP LORD KITCHENER XI 

tiaii natives, lie placed severe restrictions on the na- 
tive press, and introduced important economic re- 
forms. In a short time he had won the good will 
of the Khedive and the masses, yet secret societies 
continued to flourish, and in 1912 several arrests 
were made in connection with a plot aimed at the 
lives of the Khedive and Kitchener. 

While Kitchener was in England in the summer 
of 1914, after being made an earl by King George, 
the European situation became acute, but he had 
already set out for Cairo before the British Cabinet 
saw the need of his services at home. "When Eng- 
land entered the war in August one of the first 
names in the new Cabinet was that of Earl Kitch- 
ener as Secretary of State for War. The acclaim 
with which the appointment was greeted showed 
how truly the people had guaged the value of the 
man who had seen them safely through the South 
African troubles. In September he was made lord 
rector of Edinburgh University, President Poin- 
care of France being honored in the same way by 
the Glasgow students. Kitchener predicted that the 
war would be a long one. ''My term of office m 
for the duration of the war, or for three years if 
the war should last longer than that," he said in 
the House of Lords. Straightway he began build- 
ing up an army with the same nerve and machine- 
like mind that planned the advance on Khartum, 



Xll LIFE SKETCH OF LORD KITCHENER 

pacified the Transvaal, and organized the Indian 
Army. So well did he succeed that in November 
he could inform the public that he had 1,250,000 
men in training in England, and that he looked 
to the people to supply another 1,000,000. Under 
him troops were brought to Europe from Canada, 
India, and Australia, and the successful reenforcing 
and victualling of Sir John French's command on 
the Continent were his constant care. 

In appearance Lord Kitchener is tall, reserved 
and forbidding. He is the culmination of O 'Cou- 
ncil 's idea that ''The Englishman has all the qual- 
ities of a poker, except its occasional warmth." A 
prominent London editor has written of him : * ' He 
came into the room like the Day of Judgment, 
searching, implacable. His face wore the burnished 
livery of the Indian sun, his eyes beneath the 
straight, heavy eyebrows roved with cold, slow 
scrutiny over the crowd of fashionable people who 
ceased their chattering and made way for him. . . . 
If, as Emerson says, manners are invented to keep 
fools at a distance. Lord Kitchener is in a class of 
good manners by himself; but he is not a cheer- 
ful figure in a drawing room. A pillar of ice could 
not lower the temperature more completely. At 
his coming the idle chatter is silenced as the birds 
are silenced at the oncoming of a storm. ... No 
one of his time has said so little and done so much." 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

Me. Steevens' earlier work, " With the Conquering 
Turk," was received with such cordial recognition that 
it is perhaps unnecessary to refer to his qualities as a 
war correspondent or to his literary gifts. The Anglo- 
Egyptian expedition is a greater theme, and the writer 
of these pages has the advantage of a wider experi- 
ence. He has a broader comparative basis for his ob- 
servation, and his criticism, which he always offers 
modestly and as an "amateur,"' has a higher value. At 
the same time the power of vivid narration and keen 
characterization is quite as striking. As one of the most 
remarkable campaigns of history the Sirdar's move- 
ment on Khartum would be an interesting topic at 
any time, but just now it has a special claim to atten- 
tion in this country. A fresh experience of war, with 
the criticism of its management now ringing in our 
ears, naturally gives an incentive to a comparison 
which, as a whole, defies the criticism even of non- 
combatants. How far such a comparison is justified 
will appear from these pages. The marvelous, ma- 
chine-like precision of the Sirdar's movements is 



IISTTEODirCTOKY XOTE. 

descri'bed by Mr. Steevens with, accuracy and grapMc 
presentation of detail, but he sliows with the same 
clearness the dark background of delays and blunders 
and futilities in the years that preceded. It was not 
an affair of one summer. In being at the right place 
at the right time, and in missing nothing of importance, 
Mr. Steevens shared in the luck which he attributes 
to the Sirdar's star ; but he had to work for it. He 
joined the expedition early in 1897, and he toiled along 
with it to the end. He went through the battles of 
the Atbara and Omdurman. He entered Khartum 
with the conquerors, and he saw the raising of the 
Union Jack on the spot where Gordon fell. 



CONTENTS 



I. HALFA TELLS ITS STORY page 

The romance of the Sudan in brief — The rise of the Mahdi 
— The second act of the drama — The first Anglo- 
Egyptian strategical victory — The defeat of Nejumi — The 
turning-point of the drama — Convict labour — The taming 
of the Sudan — ^The cemetery i 

IL THE EGYPTIAN ARMY 
The growth of sixteen years — The smallest and best paid 
of conscriptive armies — The Sudanese battalions — A per- 
ennial schoolboy — Inconstant warriors — Polygamy — Uni- 
form and equipment — Cavalry and artillery — British 
officers and native troops — The merits of "Sergeant 
Whatsisname"^ — A daily heroism — Bey and Bimbashi — 
Rapid promotion — One of the highest achievements of 
our race . . . -. ...... . . ii 

III. THE S.M.R. 

The deadliest weapon against Mahdism — An impossibility 
realised — A heavy handicap — ^The railway battalions — 
Arab views on mechanics — Engines of shreds and patches 
— Bimbashi Girouard — ^An engineering triumph — A sub- 
altern with £2000 a-year — Saloon passengers^ — ^A journey 
through the desert — A desert railway station ... 23 

IV. THE CORRESPONDENT'S PROGRESS 

An outcast in the Sudan — The significance of a "line of 
communications" — The old and the young campaigner — 
A varied equipment — The buying of camels — ^An energetic 
beast — A doubtful testimonial — A waiting game — A hur- 
ried departure — A happy thought 31 

XV 



XVI CONTENTS 

V. I MARCH TO BERBER page 

The hiring of donkeys — Arab deliberation — A wonderful 
horse — The procession starts — The luxury of angarebs — 
A disreputable caravan — Four miles an hour — The desert 
treadmill — A camel ride to Berber ..... 39 

VI. THE SIRDAR 

Irrelevant details — The Sudan Machine — The harvest of 
fifteen years — A stroke of genius — An unsuccessful enter- 
prise — A diplomatic skirmish with the Khedive — Swift, 
certain, and relentless — A stern regime — A well-trusted 
general — A legitimate ambition — The Anglo-Egyptian 
Mahdi 45 

VII. ARMS AND MEN 

Major-General Hunter — The sword-arm of the Egyptian 
Army — A nineteenth-century crusader — An officer re- 
nowned for bravery — A possible new national hero — 
Lieut.-Col. Hector Macdonald — Lieut.-Col. Maxwell — 
Lieut.-Col. Lewis — Lieut.-Col. Broadwood — Lieut.-Col. 
Long — General Gatacre — The soldier's general — Arab 
notions about figures — Osman Digna — Colonel Wingate 53 

VIII. IN THE BRITISH CAMP 

A gr^t march under difficulties — A gunner's adventure — 
The boot scandal — Official explanations and admissions — 
Making the men hard — The general's morning ride — The 
camp in a dust storm — A badly chosen site . ... 66 

IX. FORT ATBARA 

Dinner in the Egyptian camp — Under a roof again — A 
sand-storm — The Fort — A revelation of Egyptian industry 
— The Egyptian soldiers on fatigue duty — A Greek 
cafe — The gunboat fleet — Crossing the Fourth Cataract — 
The value of the gunboats — War, blockade-running, and 
poaching combined 75 



CONTENTS XVU 

X. THE MARCH OUT page 

The beginning and end of the Berber season — A palatial 
house — Berber, old and new — The value of angarebs — 
The apprehensions of the Greek merchants — A splendid 
black battalion — The crossing of the luck token — "Like 
the English, we are not afraid" — ^A flattering belief . . 85 

XL THE CONCENTRATION 

The restrictions laid on correspondents — Loading the camels 
— Arab ideas of time — Impartial stupidity of the camel 
— Peripatetic Christmas trees — The brigade on the march 
— The result of General Gatacre's methods — Zariba build- 
ing — Counting the dervishes from a watch tower — A dar- 
ing feat of a gunboat 93 

XIL AT KENUR 

An ideal residence for correspondents — Arrival of the Sea- 
forths — Daily manoeuvres — A stately spectacle — Native 
ideas of distance and number 100 



XIII. ON THE ATBARA 

A veritable paradise — Sambo and the dom-nuts — A land 
without life — A cavalry skirmish — A strong reconnais- 
sance — ^A false alarm — The real enemy — The want of 
transport begins to be felt — What officers had to put up 
with — Dervish deserters — A bold stroke .... 105 



XIV. THE RAID ON SHENDI 

The virtues of bottled fruits — A liquor famine — The Sudan 
Greek's commercial instincts — ^A Nansen of trade — Inter- 
rupted festivities at Shendi — A speedy victory — The 
Jaalin's revenge — The vicissitudes of married life in the 
Sudan — The cook's grievance . ^ n6 



XVlll CONTENTS 

XV. REST AND RECONNAISSANCES page 

Mahmud stale-mated — The Egyptian cavalry — Dispiriting 
work — General Hunter's reconnaissance — Mahmud 
marked down — Rumours and surmises — Reasons for 
storming the zariba 124 



XVI. CAMEL-CORPS AND CAVALRY 

Camel-corps luck — Distant firing — The hall-mark of the 
Sudan — The second and third class passengers of the 
desert — Traces of a dervish raid — ^A cavalry fight — The 
vindication of the Egyptian trooper — A cheerful camp . 131 



XVII. THE BATTLE OF THE ATBARA 

A march by moonlight—Twelve thousand men move for- 
ward — The first gun — An hour and twenty- minutes' 
bombardment — The Camerons' advance — A rain of fire 
— The zariba demolished — A wild confusion of High- 
landers — "A very good fight" — How our blacks fought — 
A masterpiece of a battle . . 140 



XVIII. LOSSES AND GAINS 

From boys to men — Mahmud and the Sirdar — The Cam- 
erons' losses — Crossing the trenches — General Gatacre's 
bugler — Hair-breadth escapes — A cheap victory — The 
Khalifa's losses — The Baggara cavalry — Ferocious hero- 
ism — Counting the dead — Perfect strategy . . . .153 



XIX. THE TRIUMPH 

The blacks returning from battle — ^A song of thanksgiving 
— "They're lovely; they're rippers" — General Hunter 
convoying the wounded — How the injured took their 
fate — Church-parade — The return to Berber — The cap- 
tive Mahmud — The finest sight of the whole triumph . i6x 



CONTENTS XIX 

XX. EGYPT OUT OF SEASON page 

Port Said in summer — Cairo, a desolation — The Arab over- 
come — The Continental Hotel — Nileless Egypt — The keys 
of the Nile i68 

XXI. GOING UP 
On the Cairo platform — The worst seventeen hours in 
Egypt — The line at Luxor — The price of victory over the 
man-eating Sudan — ^The Nile-flood — Haifa — Dervish re- 
cruits — Three months' progress at Atbara — The master- 
toast of the Egyptian army 173 

XXII. THE FIRST STEPS FORWARD 
The force for Omdurman — The Egyptian division — The 
Warwicks — Cavalry and artillery — The new gunboats — 
Slatin Pasha — What the Khalifa's refusal to fight would 
mean 180 

XXIII. IN SUMMER QUARTERS 
The one important question — Sport on the Atbara — A pes- 
simistic senior captain — The Atbara Derby — A varied 
conversation — The recruit and the mirage — Facetious 
Tommies 187 

XXIV. DEPARTURES AND ARRIVALS 
How the blacks went up the river — The most business-like 

business in the world — ^The Rifles' first experience — Two 
favoured regiments — Amateur and professional transport 
— The perfection of method 193 

XXV. THE PATHOLOGY OF THIRST 

The Sudan thirst — Some fine distinctions — The diversions 
of a correspondent — The Sirdar at work — How to con- 
quer the thirst — A sweet revenge — The moment of the 
day . jj . >j ... .. .. ...... 198 



XX CONTENTS 

XXVI. BY ROAD, RIVER, AND RAIL page 

Fort Atbara becomes a British camp — A record for march- 
ing — The gyassas fight the wind— Shipping the 40- 
pounders — The Irish Fusiliers — The efiFect of lyddite — 
The arrival of the Guards — British subalterns — One 
more incarnation ~ 205 

XXVII. THE LAST OF FORT ATBARA 

The restrictions of the modern war-correspondent — Scenery 
finer than Switzerland — Two limp battalions — The Sir- 
dar's lightning movements — A dress-rehearsal of camels 
— Tardy vengeance for a great humiliation . . . 213 

XXVIII. THE DESERT MARCH TO OMDURMAN 

A young regiment — First impressions of cavalry in the 
field— A piquant contrast — A masterpiece of under- 
statement — A military circus — Camping on an old cotton- 
field — The vagaries of the Nile — A pleasant camp — The 
traces of Mahdism 218 

XXIX. METEMMEH 

A sign-post in the wilderness — The massacre of the Jaalin 
— Mahmud's forts — Mahmud's camp — The cenotaph of a 
tribe 226 

XXX. A CORRESPONDENT'S DIARY 

A little world full of life — The best storm of the season — 
"In the straight" — A standing miracle — A disaster to a 
gunboat — Not a white man's country — The Intelligence 
Department 233 

XXXL THE RECONNAISSANCES 

W^ith the 2ist Lancers — Dervishes at last! — The lines of 
Kerreri — The first shot — Kerreri abandoned — Omdurman 
in sight — The Khalifa's army — ^A perfect reconnaissance . 249 



CONTENTS XXI 

XXXII. THE BATTLE OF OMDURMAN page 

The position — The first attack — "Bearer party there!" — On 
to Omdurman — The second attack — Broadwood in diffi- 
culties — The Lancers' charge — Three against three thou- 
sand — The third attack — Macdonald and his blacks — The 
last Dervish 259 

XXXIII. ANALYSIS AND CRITICISM 

An appalling slaughter — Our losses — Casualties among cor- 
respondents — The Khalifa's blunders and probable fate 
— The battle of Gedaref — Our mistakes and our merits . 384 

XXXIV. OMDURMAN 

The destruction of the forts — The white flag — ^A squalid 
capital— A huge harem — Through the breach — In the 
Khalifa's citadel — Imposing on the savage — Gone! — 
Testing the Khalifa's corn — Dog-tired — Flotsam of civ- 
ilisation — Filth, lust, and blood 297 

XXXV. THE FUNERAL OF GORDON 

The Avengers — The seal on Khartum — ^The service — In 
Gordon's garden — We leave him with the flag . . . 310 

XXXVI. AFTER THE CONQUEST 

A tragedy played out — The vindication of our national self- 
respect — The trade of the Sudan — Fat Egypt and the lean 
Sudan — Beggarly, empty, miserable — Egyptian officials — 
What Egypt has gained by the conquest — The future of 
the Egyptian army — An empty limbo of torment — Naked 
nature 317 



LIST OF MAPS 



General Map — Egypt to Uganda . . At the beginning 
Sketch Map of the Nile and Atbara, to illustrate the 

operations against Mahmoud ... To face p. 78 



Sketch Plan of the Battle of Atbara 
The Nile — Metemmeh to Khartum . 
Khartum and Omdurman .... 
Battle of Omdurman, Phase One, 7 a.m. 

" " " Two, 9.40 a. 

" " " Three, 10. 10 a.m 



144 
220 
246 
260 
266 
278 



THE CHIEF EVENTS IN THE ATBARA AND 
OMDURMAN CAMPAIGNS. 



of 



Sirdar asks for reinforcements of British 

troops 

British brigade starts for front from Abu Dis 
ti II reaches Dibeika, beyond Berber 

Sirdar leaves Berber . . . 
Concentration at Eenur . . 
Army moves up the Atbara . . 
First contact with Dervish cavahy 
Shendi raided and destroyed . 
General Hunter reconnoitres Mahmud's zariba 
Second reconnaissance : cavalry action before 

Mahmud's zau-iba . 
Battle of the Atbara . 
Sirdar's triumphal entry into Berber 
Bailhead reaches Abeidieh : construction 

new gunboats begun 
Bailhead reaches Fort Atbara . . 
Lewis's Brigade leaves Atbara for south 
Second British brigade arrives at Atbara 
Sirdar leaves Atbara for front 
Last troops leave Atbara . . 
Final concentration at Gebel Royan 
March from Gebel Boyan to Wady Abid (eight 

miles) 

March from Wady Abid to Sayal (ten mii^) 

II Sayal to Wady Suetne (eight miles ) 

Kerreri reconnoitred and shelled . 
March from Wady Suetne to Agaiga (six miles) ; 

Omdurman reconnoitred and forts silenced 
Battle and capture of Omdurman 
Funeral of Gordon 
Sirdar starts for Fashoda 
Battle of Gedaref . . . 
Sirdar returns from Fashoda , 



Dec. 31, 


1897 


Feb. 26, 


1898 


March 3, 


II 


II 15, 


II 


H 16, 


n 


m 20, 


N 


« 21, 


n 


n 27, 


H 


n 80, 


H 


April 4, 




.. 8, 




H 11, 




II 18, 




June (middle 


N 


July (early) 




Aug. 3-17, 




H 13, 




N 18, 




« 28, 




u 29, 




m 30, 




H 81, 




II 31, 




Sept. 1, 




« 2, 




1 4, 




m 9, 


* . 



24, 



WITH KITCHENER 
TO KHARTUM 



HAIJ'A TELLS ITS STORY 

To walk round Wady Haifa is to read the whole 
romance of the Sudan. This is the look-out whence 
Egypt has strained her vision up-Nile to the vast, 
silent, torrid, murderous desert land, which has been 
in turn her neighbour, her victim, all but her undoing, 
and is now to be her triumph again. On us English, 
too, the Sudan has played its fatal witchery, and half 
the tale of Haifa is our own as well as Egypt's. On 
its buildings and up and down its sandy, windy streets 
we may trace all the stages of the first conquest, the 
loss, the bitter failures to recover, the slow recom- 
mencement, the presage of final victory. 

You can get the whole tale into a walk of ten 
minutes. First look at that big white building : it is 



GENERAL MAP-EGYPT TO UGMDA 




2 HALFA TELLS ITS STOBT. 

the Egyptian military hospital, and one of the largest, 
solidest structures of Haifa. In shape and style, you 
will notice, it is not unlike a railway-station — and 
that is just what it was meant to be. That was the 
northern terminus of Ismail Pasha's great railway to 
Khartum, which was to have run up-river to Dongola 
and Debbeh, and thence across the Bayuda, by Jakdul 
and Abu Klea to Metemmeh. The scheme fell short, 
like all Ismail's grandiose ambitions ; Gordon stopped 
it, and paid for his unforesight with his life. The 
railway never reached the Third Cataract. The upper 
part of it was torn to pieces by the Dervishes, who 
chopped the sleepers into firewood, and twisted the 
telegraph-wires to spear-heads ; the part nearer Haifa 
lay half-derelict for many years, till it was aroused at 
length to play its part in the later act of the tragedy 
of the Sudan. 

Now, twenty yards along the line — in this central 
part of Haifa every street is also a railway — you see 
a battered, broken - winded engine. It was here in 
1884. That is one of the properties of the second act 
— the nerveless efforts to hold the Sudan when the 
Mahdi began to rip it loose. For in the year 1881, 
before we came to Egypt at all, there had arisen a re- 
ligious teacher, a native of Dongola, named Mohammed 
Ahmed. The Sudan is the home of fanaticism: it 
has always been called " the Land of the Dervishes," 
and no rising saint was more ascetic than the young 
Dongolawi. He was a disciple of a holy man named 



THE BEGINNING OF THE MAHDI. 3 

Mohammed Sherif, and one day the master gave a feast 
at which there was dancing and singing. Such friv- 
olity, said Mohammed Ahmed, was displeasing to 
Allah; whereat the Sherif was angry, cursed him, 
and cast him out. The disciple sprinkled ashes 
on his head, put a yoke on his neck, and fell at his 
master's feet, imploring forgiveness. Again Moham- 
med Sherif cursed him and cast him out. 

Angered now himself, Mohammed Ahmed joined a 
new teacher and became a straiter ascetic than ever. 
The fame of his sanctity spread, and adherents flocked 
to him. He saw that the people of the Sudan, smart- 
ing under extortion and oppression, could but too easily 
be roused against the Egyptian Government : he risked 
all, and proclaimed himself El Mahdi el Muntazer, 
the Expected Guide, the Mussulman Messiah. The 
Governor - General at Khartum sent two companies 
to arrest him: the Mahdi's followers fell on them 
unawares and destroyed them. More troops were 
sent ; the Mahdists destroyed them : next came a 
small army, and again the Mahdists destroyed it. The 
barbarous tribesmen flocked to the Mahdi's standard, 
and in September 1882 he laid siege to El Obeid, the 
chief city of Kordofan. His assault was beaten back 
with great slaughter, but after five months' siege the 
town surrendered ; sack and massacre taught doubters 
what they had to expect. 

The Sudan doubted no longer : of a truth this was 
the Mahdi. Hicks Pasha's army came down from the 



i HALFA TBLLS ITS STOBY. 

North only to swell the Mahdi's triumph to immensity. 
Unorganised, unwieldy, afraid, the Egyptians crawled 
on towards El Obeid, harassed by an enemy they 
never saw. They saw them at last on November 4, 
1883, at Shekan : the fight lasted a minute, and the 
massacre spared only hundreds out of ten thousand. 
The rest you know — Gordon's mission, the loss of 
Berber, the siege of Khartum, the massacre of Baker's 
levies at El Teb, Graham's expedition to Suakim, and 
the hard-fought fights of the second Teb and Tamai, 
Wolseley's expedition up the Nile, with Abu Klea and 
the Gubar and Kirbekan, the second Suakim cam- 
paign and M'Neill's zariba. Everybody knows these 
stories, so gallant, so futile. I remember thirteen 
and fourteen years ago being enormously proud and 
joyful about Tamai and Abu Klea. I was very young. 
Read over the tale again now — the faltering and the 
folly and the failure — and you will feel that if Egypt 
has Baker's Teb and Hicks's ruin to wipe out, Eng- 
land was not so very far from sufiering precisely the 
same humiliations. And in the end we failed, with 
what loss we still remember, and gave the Sudan 
away. The second act is not a merry one. 

The third was less tragic, but it was perhaps even 
harder to play. We pass by a mud-walled quad- 
rangle, which was once the artillery barracks ; through 
the gateway you look across sand to the mud ram- 
parts of Haifa. That is the stamp of the days of 
reorganisation, of retrenchment, of difficulties and 



THB FIRST ANGLO-EGYPTIAN VICTORY. 6 

discouragements, and unconquerable, undisappointed 
work. Those were the days when the Egyptian 
army was in the making, when Haifa was the fron- 
tier fortress. There are old barracks all over it, 
where the young fighting force of Egypt used to sleep 
half awake. The brown flanks of those hills beyond 
the rifle-range, just a couple of miles or so desert- 
wards, have seen Dervishes stealing up in broad day 
and insolently slashing and stabbing in the main 
streets of the bazaar. Yet this time was not all un- 
avenged insult: the long years between 1885 and 
1896 saw Egypt defended and its assailants smashed 
to pieces. Little by little Egypt — British Egypt now 
— gained strength and new resolution. 

Four battles mark the stages from weakness and 
abandonment to confidence and the resolution to re- 
conquer. At Ginnis, on the last day but one of 1885, 
came the first Anglo - Egyptian strategical victory. 
The Mahdists had been tactically beaten before — well 
beaten ; but the result had always been that we fell 
back and they came on. After Ginnis, fought by the 
British army of occupation, aided by a small number 
of the new Egyptian army, we stood firm, and the 
Dervishes were washed back. There were men of 
the Cameron Highlanders on the Atbara, who had 
fought in that battle : it was not perhaps a very 
great one, but it was the first time the enemy had 
been brought to a standstill. He retired behind the 
Third Cataract. 



6 HALFA TELLS ITS STOEY. 

Then followed three years of raid and counter-raid. 
Chermside cut up their advance-guard at Sarras ; they 
captured the fort of Khor Musa, and Machell Bey of 
the 13th Sudanese drove them out within twelve 
hours. On the Suakim side the present Sirdar made 
head against Osman Digna with what irregulars and 
friendlies he could get together. Then in 1888 Osman 
waxed insolent and threw up trenches against Suakim. 
It became a regular siege, and Dervish shells fell into 
the town. But on December 20 Sir Francis Grenfell, 
the Sirdar, came down and attacked the trenches at 
the battle of Gemaizeh, and Osman fell back shat- 
tered : never again did he come so near his soul's 
ambition. 

Meanwhile Wad-en-Nejumi — the great Emir, the 
conqueror of Hicks and the captor of Khartum — had 
hung on the southern frontier, gathering strength for 
his attack on Egypt. He came in 1889, skirting 
Haifa in the western desert, striking for a point in 
Egypt proper above Assuan. His Emirs got out of 
hand and tried to get to the Nile; in a hard day's 
tussle at Argin, Colonel Wodehouse and the Haifa 
garrison threw him back into the desert again. N"e- 
jumi pushed on southward, certain of death, certain of 
Paradise. At Toski Grenfell brought him to battle 
with the flower of the Egyptian army. At the end of 
the day Nejumi was dead and his army was beginning 
to die of thirst in the desert. Egypt has never been 
attacked since. 



THE TURNING-POINT OF THE DRAMA. 7 

Finally, in 1891 Colonel Holled - Smith marched 
against Osman Digna's base outside Suakim, the oasis 
of Tokat. The Dervishes sprang upon him at Afafit, 
but the days of surprise and panic were over. They 
were rolled back and shattered to pieces ; their base 
was occupied ; and Suakim as well as Haifa had peace. 
Now all ground was finally maintained, and all was 
ripe for attack again. England heard little of this 
third act; but for all that, unadvertised, hard-work- 
ing, it was the turning-point of the whole drama. 

And now we have come to the locomotive-sheds 
and the fitting-shops, the boiler-houses and the store- 
rooms; we are back in the present again, and the 
Haifa of to-day is the Egypt of to-day. Haifa has 
left off being a fortress and a garrison; to-day it is 
all workshop and railway terminus. To-day it makes 
war not with bayonets, but with rivets and spindle- 
glands. Railways run along every dusty street, and 
trains and trucks clank up and down till Haifa looks 
for all the world like Chicago in a turban. In chains, 
too, for to Haifa come all the worst villains of Egypt. 
You must know that, till the other day, no Egyptian 
could be hanged for murder except on the evidence of 
eyewitnesses — just the people whom most murderers 
try to avoid. So the rails and sleepers are slung 
ashore to the jingle of ankle - chains ; and after a 
day in Haifa it startles you in no way to hear that 
the black foreman of the engine - shop did his five 
murders, and that, nevertheless, he is a most intelli- 



8 HALFA TELLS ITS STORY. 

gent, industriouSj.and harmless creature. On the con- 
trary, you find it admirable that Egypt's ruffians are 
doing Egypt's work. 

Haifa clangs from morning till night with rails 
lassoed and drawn up a sloping pair of their fellows 
by many convicts on to trucks ; it thuds with sleepers 
and boxes of bully-beef dumped on to the shore. As 
you come home from dinner you stumble over strange 
rails, and sudden engine-lamps flash in your face, and 
warning whistles scream in your ears. As you lie 
at night you hear the plug-plug of the goods engine, 
nearer and nearer, till it sounds as if it must be 
walking in at your tent door. From the shops of 
Haifa the untamed Sudan is being tamed at last. It 
is the new system, the modern system — mind and 
mechanics beating muscle and shovel-head spear. It 
takes up and digests all the past : the bits of Ismail's 
railway came into the Dongola line ; the engine of 
Wolseley's time has been rebuilt, and is running 
again f the artillery barracks are a store for all things 
pertaining to engines. They came together for the 
fourth act — the annihilating surprise of Ferkeh, the 
masterly passage of Hafir, the occupation of Dongola 
and Merawi, the swift march and sharp storm of Abu 
Hamed, the swoop on Berber. They were all coming 
together now for the victorious end, ready to enter 
for the fifth act and the final curtain on Khartum. 

But that is not all Haifa, and it is not all the 
Sudan. Looking at it hence from its threshold, the 



THE CEMETESY. 9 

Sudan seems like a strong and swift wild beast, 
which many hunters have pursued, none subdued. 
The Sudan is a man-eater — red -gorged, but still 
insatiable. Turn your pony's head and canter out 
a mile ; we are at the cemetery. No need to dis- 
mount, or even to read the names — see merely how 
full it is. Each white cross is an Englishman de- 
voured by the Sudan. Go and hear the old inhabi- 
tants talk — the men who have contrived to live year 
in, year out, in the Sudan, in splitting sun and red- 
hot sand. You will notice it best with the men who 
are less trained to take a pull on their sentiment than 
are British officers — with the engineer corporals and 
the foreman mechanics, and ail the other plain, 
efficient Englishmen who are at work on Haifa. 
Their talk is half of the chances of action, and the 
other half of their friends that have died. 

" Poor Bill, 'e died in the desert surveying to Habu 
'Amed. Yes, 'e's 'ere in the cemetery. No ; there 
wasn't any white man there at the time." 

" Ah, yes ; he was a good fellow, and so was poor 
Captain Blank ; a real nice man, he was now ; no 
better in all the Egyptian army, sir, and I tell you 
that's saying a good deal, that is. Fought, too, 
against it ; he was engaged to a girl at home, you 
know, sir, and he wouldn't give up. I nursed him 
till the doctor come, and then till the end. Didn't 
you see him when you was out at the cemetery ; he's 
next to poor Dash ? " 



10 HALFA TELLS ITS STOBT. 

* Ah, yes," says the third ; " don't you remembeT 
that night out at Murat — poor Blank, and poor Dash, 
and poor Tertius, and you, and me. Five we were, 
and now there's only us two left. Dear, yes ; and I 
slept in Tertius's bed the night before he took it ; he 
was gone and buried forty -eight — no, thirty- six, it 
was — thirty -six hours later. Ah, yes; he was a 
good fellow, too. The way those niggers cried ! " 

Yes; it is a murderous devil, the Sudan, and we 
have watered it with more of our blood than it will 
ever yield to pay for. The man-eater is very grim, 
and he is not sated yet Only this time he was to be 
conquered at last. 



II 



THE EGYPTIAN ARMY 



The Anglo-Egyptian army is not quite sixteen years 
old. The old Turco-Egyptian army was knocked to 
pieces by Lord Wolseley at Tel-el-Kebir, and the 
Mahdi ground the fragments to powder. Out of 
the nothing which remained sixteen years of British 
leadership have sufficed to build up an army capable 
of fighting foot for foot with the victors of Tel-el- 
Kebir, and accustomed to see the backs of the con- 
querors of Hicks and Baker and Gordon. 

Sixteen years of active service have seen a ' great 
increase on the eight battalions which were Sir Evelyn 
Wood's original command. To-day the Egyptian army 
numbers nineteen battalions of infantry, ten squadrons 
of cavalry, one horse and four field batteries, and 
Maxims, a camel corps of eight companies, and the 
usual non-combatant services. Lord Dufferin limited 
the original army to 6000 men, with 25 white offi- 
cers ; to-day it counts three times that number with 
over 140. 



12 THE EGYPTIAN ASMT. 

The army is of course raised by conscription. But 
probably the conscription sits less heavily on Egypt 
than on any country in the world. Out of ten 
millions it takes — counting the railway battalions — 
under 20,000 men, — that is to say, one out of every 
500 of population; whereas Germany takes 1 in 89, 
and France 1 in 66. That is only on the peace-footing, 
moreover ; Egypt has been at war ever since the birth 
of the new army ; no conscriptive nation ever carried 
war so lightly. On the other hand, the Egyptian 
soldier is called on to serve six years with the colours 
and nine in the reserve or the police. The small 
proportion of men taken enables the War Office to 
pick and choose ; so that in point of physique also the 
Egyptian army could probably give weight to any 
in the world. And not only is it the smallest of con- 
scriptive armies — it is also the best paid. The fellah 
receives a piastre (2|d.) a-day — a magnificent salary, 
equal to what he would usually be making in full 
work*in his native village. 

Even these figures do not do justice to the easy con- 
ditions on which Egypt supports her army. For of 
the eighteen battalions of infantry, six — 9th to 14th — 
are Sudanese blacks. The material of these is not 
drawn from Egypt proper, nor, properly speaking, by 
conscription. The black is liable to be enlisted wher- 
ever he is found, as such, in virtue of his race ; and he 
is enlisted for life. Such a law would be a terrible 
tyranny for the fellah : in the estimation of the black 



OUB SUDANESE SOLDIEBS. 13 

it only gives comfort and security in the natural 
vocation of every man worth calling such — war. Many 
of the black soldiers have fought against us in the 
past, with the same energy and enjoyment as they 
now exhibit in our service. After each victory the 
more desirable of the prisoners and deserters are 
enlisted, to their great content, in one black battalion 
or another. Every morning I had seen them on the 
range at Haifa — the British sergeant-instructor teach- 
ing the ex-Dervishes to shoot. When the recruit 
made a bull— which he did surprisingly often — the 
white sergeant, standing behind him with a paper, 
cried, " Quaiss hitir " — " Very good." When he made 
a fool of himself, the black sergeant trod on him as he 
lay flat on his belly : he accepted praise and reproof 
with equal satisfaction, as part of his new game of 
disciplined war. The black is a perennial schoolboy, 
without the schooling. 

The black soldier is not adapted to garrison life. 
They brought a battalion down to Cairo once ; but the 
soldiers insisted on driving about all day in carriages, 
and then beat the driver when he asked for his fare. 
Ever since then the Sudanese battalions have been 
kept on the frontier — either up the Nile or on the 
Suakim side, wherever there has been fighting to do. 
Having neither knowledge of civilised enjoyments 
nor desire for them, they are very happy. Their pay 
is, properly, higher than that of the fellahin — 14s. a- 
month to begin with and 3|d. a-day allowance for the 



14 THE EGTFTIAN ABIIT. 

wife and family of such as are allowed to marry. The 
allowance is given generously, for woman is to the 
black soldier a necessary of life. On a campaign he 
must, of course, leave his wife and children behind : 
there is a large village of them just above Assuan. 
But since their time, I am afraid, as the frontier has 
ever advanced up-river, the inconstant warrior has 
formed fresh ties ; and now at Haifa, at Dongola, at 
Berber, the path of victory is milestoned with expec- 
tant wives and children. 

It is not so abandoned as it sounds, for the Sudan- 
ese are born of polygamy, and it would be unreason- 
able to expect them not to live in it. Here is a 
typical case. One day a particularly smart soldier 
came and desired to speak with his commanding 
officer. 

" I wish to marry, O thou Bey," he said. 

" But aren't you married ? " 

" Tes ; but my wife is old and has no child, and I 
desire,a child. I wish therefore to marry the sister of 
Sergeant Mohammed Ali, and he also is willing." 

" Then you want to send away your present wife ? " 

"0 no, Excellency. My wife cooks very well, 
and I want her to cook my rations. She also is 
willing." 

So, everybody being willing, the second marriage 
took place. Mohammed All's sister duly bore a son, 
and the first wife cooked for the whole family, and 
they all lived happy ever afterwards. 



BGTFTIAN GAYALBT. 15 

Each infantry battalion, black and Egyptian alike, 
is divided into six companies, which parade between 
100 and 120 strong ; a battalion thus counts roughly, 
with band and bearer parties, from 650 to 750 rifles. 
The normal strength of a battalion is 759. The 
uniform is much the same for all arms — brown 
jersey, sand-coloured trousers, and dark-blue putties. 
Over the tarbush the Egyptians have a cover which 
hangs down behind over the nape of the neck : the 
blacks need no such protection from their native 
sun, and do with plaited-straw round the tarbush, 
bearing a badge whose colour varies with the various 
battalions. The infantry rifle is the Martini. 

The cavalry are all Egyptians, recruited mostly 
from the Eayum oasis : a black can never be made to 
understand that a horse needs to be groomed and fed. 
The horses are stout, hardy beasts of 13 hands or so : 
they get through an amazing amount of work, and so 
do the men, though they are a little heavy in the 
saddle. The strength of a squadron is about 100 ; the 
front rank, as in all civilised armies, carry lance as 
well as sabre and Martini carbine. Seven of the 
squadron leaders are Englishmen. 

Two batteries of field-artillery are armed with new 
Maxim-Nordenfeldt quick-firing 9-pounders, or 18- 
pounders with a double shell — handy little creatures 
which a couple of mules draw easily. The horse- 
battery has 12-pounder Krupps, the rest 9-pounders. 
Each battery has a white commander: all th» mea 



16 THB EGYPTIAN ARMY. 

are Egyptians, and their physical strength and teach- 
ableness make them almost ideal gunners. 

The camel corps is some 800 strong — half black, 
half fellah. They use the mounted-infantry saddle, 
sitting astride, and carry Martini and bayonet. There 
are five white officers. 

Of the fellah battalions some are officered by 
Englishmen, some not. The former are 1st to 4th 
and 15th to 18th; 5th to 8th are officered entirely 
by natives. Until this campaign the normal number 
of white officers has been three to an Egyptian and 
four to a Sudanese battalion : the latter require more 
holding, and also usually see more fighting, than the 
former. Most of them were one or even two short. 
But for this campaign — the final campaign, the climax 
for which the Anglo-Egyptian army has existed and 
drudged sixteen years — the number of British officers 
had been raised to four in some battalions for the 
fellahin and five for the blacks. There has been com- 
plaining, both in Egypt and at home, that the propor- 
tion of British to Egyptian officers seems to grow 
greater, whereas in theory it ought to grow less; 
but the objection is political rather than military. 
Many good judges would like to see a few black bat- 
talions officered right through by white men, like our 
West India Eegiment. There is no better regimental 
officer than the Englishman ; there is no better natural 
fighter than the Sudanese: there would hardly be a 
likelier force in the world. 



SERGEANT WHATSISNAMB. 17 

The native officers are largely of Turkish, Circas- 
sian, or Albanian race, with the qualities and defects 
of their blood; their standard of professional attain- 
ment and duty is higher than that of the Turkish 
•amy, their courage in action no lower. Native Egyp- 
tians have furnished the army with one or two con- 
spicuously useful officers. There is also a certain 
proportion of black captains and subalterns among 
the Sudanese : they are keen, work well with the 
British, and, of course, are utterly fearless ; but, as a 
rule, lack of education keeps them out of the higher 
grades. 

Finally, we must not forget Sergeant Whatsisname, 
as with grateful appreciation of fame at Mr Kipling's 
hands he is proud to call himself. Each battalion has 
as instructor a British non-commissioned officer: he 
drills it, teaches it to shoot, makes soldiers of it: 
Perhaps there is no body of men in the world whc 
do more unalloyed and unlimited credit to their coun- 
try than the colour-sergeants and sergeants with the 
Egyptian army. In many ways their position is a 
very difficult one. Technically they are suboijiuate 
to all native officers down to the latest-joined sub- 
lieutenant. The slacker sort of native officer resents 
the presence of these keenly military subordinates, 
and does his best to make them uncomfortable. But 
the white sergeant knows how not to see unpleasant- 
ness till it is absolutely unavoidable ; then he knows 
how to go quietly to his colonel and assert his posi- 



18 THE EGYPTIAN AKMT. 

tion without publicly humiliating his superior. When 
you hear that the sergeant - instructors are highly 
endowed with tact, you will guess that in the virtues 
that come more naturally to the British sergeant they 
shine exceedingly. Their passionate devotion to duty 
rises to a daily heroism. Living year in, year out, in 
a climate very hard upon Europeans, they are natur- 
ally unable to palliate it with the comparative luxuries 
of the ojB&cer; though it must be said that the con- 
sideration of the officer for his non-commissioned 
comrade is one of the kindliest of all the many kindly 
touches with which the British-Egyptian softens pri- 
vation and war. But the white officer rides and the 
white sergeant marches. " Where a nigger can go, I 
can go," he says, and tramps on through the sun. 
Early in the year one of them marched with the 4th 
every step of the road from Suakim — the only white 
man who ever did it. In action the white sergeant 
has no particular place or duties, so he charges ahead 
of the^ first line. At Haifa, training the recruits, he 
has no officer set over him, and can do pretty well 
what he likes ; so he stands five hours in the sun 
before breakfast with his men on the range. He 
must needs be a keen soldier or he would not have 
volunteered for his post, and a good one, or he would 
not have got it. But on the top of this he is also 
essentially a fine man. Stiffened by marches and 
fights and cholera camps, broadened by contact with 
things new and strange, polished by a closer associa- 



AN ABMT OF TOUHTG MEN. 19 

tion with his officers than the service allows at home, 
elevated by responsibility cheerfully undertaken and 
honourably sustained, — he is a mirror of soldierly 
virtue. 

The position of the British officer is as assured 
as that of the sergeant is ambiguous. No British 
regimental officer takes lower rank than major 
(Bimbashi) ; none has any superior native officer in 
his own corps. The lieutenant -colonel (KaimaJcam) 
commanding each battalion is usually a captain or 
major in the British army, and the Bimhashis usually 
subalterns : so many of both ranks, however, have 
earned brevets or been promoted, that in talking of 
officers in the Egyptian army it will be simplest to 
call a battalion commander Bey, which is the courtesy 
title by which he is usually addressed, and his British 
subordinate Bimbashi. 

To take a man from the command of a company 
and put him to command a battalion is a big jump ; 
but with the British officers in Egypt the experiment 
has richly justified itself. The Egyptian army is an 
army of young men. The Sirdar is forty-eight years 
old ; General Hunter was a major-general before he 
was forty. The whole army has only one combatant 
officer over fifty. Through the Dongola campaign 
majors commanded brigades and captains battalions ; 
at Abu Hamed, last year, a subaltern of twenty-eight 
led his regiment in action. With men either rash or 
timid such sudden promotion might be dangerous; 



20 THE EGYPTIAN AEMT. 

but the officers of the Egyptian army are at the 
same time unafraid of responsibility and equal to it. 
Their professional success has been very great — some 
whisper, too great. "After Tel-el-Kebir," said a 
captain in the British brigade, "one of our officers 
came to me and talked of joining the Egyptian army. 
For God's sake, don't,' I said; 'don't: you'll spend 
your life thrashing fellahin into action with a stick.' 
Now, here am I commanding a company, and a man 
who was under me in the Kandahar show is com- 
manding a brigade." Certainly the Egyptian officers 
may have passed over men as good as they ; but their 
luck has lain solely in getting the chance to show their 
merit. 

For after all the fact remains, that while the British 
campaigns in the Sudan are a long story of failure 
brightened only by stout fighting, the Egyptian 
campaigns have been a consistent record of success. 
With inferior material, at a tithe of the expense, they 
have ^orn their enemy down by sheer patience and 
pluck and knowledge of their business. In the old days 
campaigns were given up for want of transport ; now 
rations are as certain in Khartum as in Cairo. In the 
old days we used to be surprised and to fight in square ; 
now we surprise the enemy and attack in line. In 
quite plain language, what Gordon and Wolseley failed 
to do the Sirdar has done. The credit is not all his : 
part must go to Sir Evelyn Wood and Sir Francis 
Grenfell, his predecessors, and to the whole body of 



A GREAT ACHIEVEMENT. 21 

officers Sa due proportion. They have paid for their 
proELD^ion with years on the frontier — years of sweat 
and siindstorm by day, of shivering and alarms by 
night, of banishment always ; above all, they have 
richly earned it by success. Now that the long 
straggle is crowned with victory, we may look back on 
those fourteen indomitable years as one of the highest 
achievements of our nkiL 



Ill 



THE S.M.R 



Halfa is nearly four hundred miles from the 
Atbara ; yet it was the decisive point of the campaign. 
For in Haifa was being forged the deadliest weapon 
that Britain has ever used against Mahdism — the 
Sudan Military Eailway. In the existence of the 
railway lay all the difference between the extempore, 
amateur scrambles of Wolseley's campaign and the 
machine-like precision of Kitchener's. When civilisa- 
tion fights with barbarism it must fight with civilised 
weapons ; for with his own arts on his own ground 
the barbarian is almost certain to be the better man. 
To go into the Sudan without complete transport and 
certain communications is as near madness as to go 
with spears and shields. Time has been on the 
Sirdar's side, whereas it was dead against Lord 
Wolseley ; and of that, as of every point in his game, 
the Sirdar has known how to ensure the full advantage. 
There was fine marching and fine fighting in the 
campaign of the Atbara : the campaign would have 



AN BNGmSERING FEAT. 23 

failed without them ; but without the railway there 
could never have been any campaign at all. The 
battle of the Atbara was won in the workshops of 
Wady Haifa. 

Everybody knew that a railway from Haifa across the 
desert to Abu Hamed was an impossibility — until the 
Sirdar turned it into a fact. It was characteristic of 
the Sirdar's daring — daring based on complete know- 
ledge and just confidence in himself and his instru- 
ments ; but to the uninformed it seems mad reckless- 
ness — that he actually launched his rails and sleepers 
into the waterless desert, while the other end of the line 
was still held by the enemy. Water was bored for, and, 
at the third attempt, found, which lightened the task ; 
but the engineers are convinced that, water or no water, 
the Sirdar's ingenuity and determination would have 
carried the enterprise through. Long before the line 
was due to arrive Abu Hamed had fallen : before the 
end of 1897 the line touched the Nile again at that 
point, 234 miles from Haifa, and the journey to Ber- 
ber took a day instead of weeks. 

There was no pause at Abu Hamed ; work was begun 
immediately on the 149-mile stretch to the Atbara, 
At the beginning of the year, when the rumours of 
Mahmud's advance began to harden into credibility 
and the British regiments were started up the river, 
rail-head was some twenty miles south of Abu 
Hamed. The object, of course, was to push it on 
south of the series of rapids ending at Geneineteh, 



24 THE SJ12. 

some twenty-odd miles short of Berber, which are 
called the Fifth Cataract. On the failing river camel 
portage had to be used round the broken water, which 
was a serious difficulty in the way of the transport 
A second object in hurrying on the work was to get 
the sections of the three new gunboats to the same 
point south of the cataract, where they could be put 
together ready for the final advance. 

It was a heavy strain, for the railway had not only 
to carry up supplies and stores : it had also to carry 
the materials for its own extension. There is no 
wood for sleepers between Abu Hamed and the 
Atbara, much less any possibility of providing rails. 
So that all day long you heard the wailing lilt, with- 
out which no Arab can work in time ; all day at 
intervals the long material train pulled out from the 
beach-siding piled up with rails and sleepers, paused 
awhile at the bank of sand which is the platform of 
the northern terminus, and in due time puffed off 
southward till it was lost among the desert sand- 
hills. 

It was a heavy handicap that an infant railway 
should be asked for double work, but that was only 
the beginning of the difficulty. The S.M.R, like every 
thing else in Egypt, must be worked on the cheap. 
There is no trouble about the labour — the Eailway 
Battalions supply that. The Eailway Battalions are 
raised by conscription, only instead of fighting with 
Martini and bayonet the conscripts fight with shovel 



THE RAILWAY BATTALIONS. 25 

and pick. I have heard it cjalled the Corv6e in an- 
other form : so, if you like, it is. But it is no more 
Corv4e than the work of sappers in any European 
army. The fellah has to shovel for his country in- 
stead of fighting for it, and he would much rather. 
It is war service which happens to retain a permanent 
value when war is over ; so much the better for 
everybody. 

But if navvy labour is abundant and cheap and 
efficient, everything else is scarce and cheap and 
nasty. English firemen and drivers are hard to get, 
and Italian mechanics are largely employed — so much 
so, that the Director of Eailways has found it worth 
while to spare a cafd for them out of his cramped 
elbow-room. As for native mechanics, there are 
branches of work in which they are hopeless. As 
fitters they are a direct temptation to suicide, for the 
Arab mind can never be brought to see that a tenth 
of an inch more or less can possibly matter to any- 
body. "Malesh" he says, "it doesn't matter; shove 
it in." And then the engine breaks down. 

As for engines and rolling-stock the S.M.E. must 
make the best of what it can get. Half-a-dozen new 
engines of English breed there were when I got to 
Haifa — fine, glossy, upstanding, clean-limbed, power- 
ful creatures ; and it was a joy to watch the marvelling 
black sentry looking up to one of them in adoration 
and then warily round lest anybody should seek to 
steal it. There were others ordered, but — miracle of 



26 THE S.MJt. 

national lunacy! — ^the engineering strike intervened, 
and the orders had to go to Baldwin's of Philadelphia. 
For the rest the staff had to mend up anything they 
found about. Old engines from Ismail's abortive rail- 
way, old engines from Natal, from the Cape, broken 
and derelict, had to be patched up with any kind of 
possible fittings retrieved and adapted from the scrap- 
heap. Odd parts were picked up in the sand and 
fitted into their places again : if they were useless 
they were promptly turned into something else and 
made useful. 'There are a couple of Ismail's boilers in 
use now which were found lying miles away in the 
desert and rolled in by lever and hand. In the 
engine-shed you see rusty embryos of engines that 
are being tinkered together with bits of rubbish col- 
lected from everywhere. And still they move. 

Who moves them ? It is part of the Sirdar's luck 
— that luck which goes with genius — that he always 
gets the best conceivable subordinates. Conceive a 
blend* of French audacity of imagination, American 
ingenuity, and British doggedness in execution, and 
you will have the ideal qualities for such a work. 
The Director of Eailways, Bimbashi Girouard, is a 
Canadian, presumably of French derivation. In early 
life he built a section of the Canadian Pacific. He 
came out to Egypt for the Dongola campaign — one of 
three subalterns specially chosen from the Eailway 
Department of the Eoyal Engineers. The Sudan 
killed the other two out of hand, but Bimbashi 



▲ CBOWNING WONDKE. 27 

Girouard goes on building and running liis railways. 
The Dongola line runs as far as Kerma, above the 
Third Cataract. The Desert Line must wait at the 
Atbara for a bridge before it can be extended to Khar- 
tum. But already here is something over five hundred 
miles of rail laid in a savage desert — a record to make 
the reputation of any engineer in the world, standing 
to the credit of a subaltern of sappers. The Egyptian 
army is a triumph of youth on every side, but in none 
is it more signal than in the case of the Director of 
Eailways. He never loses his head nor forgets his 
own mind : he is credited with being the one man in 
the Egyptian army who is unaffectedly unafraid of 
the Sirdar. 

Having finished the S.M.E. to the Atbara, Bimbashi 
Girouard accepted the post of Director-Genera of all 
the Egyptian railways. There will be plenty of scope 
for him in the post, and it will not be wasted. But 
just reflect again on this crowning wonder of British 
Egypt — a subaltern with all but Cabinet rank and 
£2000 a-year! 

When the time came to go up by the desert line an 
engine, two trucks, and a fatigue-party called at the 
door for our baggage : that is the advantage of a rail- 
way-trafl&c managed by subalterns. We had the luck 
to get berths in the big saloon. It is built on the Indian 
plan — four beds in one compartment, eight in the other, 
plenty of room on the floor, and shutters everywhere 
to keep out the sand. The train looked as if the other 



28 THE S.M.B. 

end of it must be at Abu Hamed already — a vista of 
rails, sleepers, boxes, camels, and soldiers, and two 
turkeys, the property of a voluptuous Brigadier, bub- 
bling with indignation through the darkness. How- 
ever she ran out smoothly enough towards midnight. 
We slept peacefully, four of us — the other made 
night hideous with kicks, and exhortations to vision- 
ary soldiers to fire low — and in the morning woke up 
rather less than a hundred miles on our way. But 
then the first hundred miles is all up-hill, though the 
gradient is nowhere difficult. The train ran beauti- 
fully, for while the surface sand is very easy to work 
it has a firm bottom, and the rails do not settle. All 
day we rumbled on prosperously, with no mischance 
more serious than a broken rail, and we crawled safely 
over that. 

Half the day we read and half the day we played 
cards, and when it grew dark we sang, for all the world 
like Thomas Atkins. Every now and then we varied the 
monotony with a meal ; the train stopped frequently, 
and even when it did not the pace was slow enough 
for an agile butler to serve lunch by jumping off his 
truck and climbing on to the saloon foot-board. The 
scenery, it must be owned, was monotonous, and yet 
not without haunting beauty. Mile on mile, hour on 
hour, we glided through sheer desert. Yellow sand to 
right and left — now stretching away endlessly, now 
a valley between small broken hills. Sometimes the 
hills sloped away from us, then they closed in again. 



A DESEET SWINDON. 29 

Now they were diaphanous blue on the horizoiij 
now soft purple as we ran under their flanks. But 
always they were steeped through and through with 
sun — -hazy, immobile, silent. It looked like a part 
of the world quite new, with none of the bloom 
rubbed off. It seemed almost profanity that I should 
be intruding on the sanctity of the prime. 

But I was not the first intruder. Straight, firm, 
and purposeful ran the rails. Now they split into a 
double line : here was another train waiting — a string 
of empty trucks — and also a tent, a little hut made of 
sleeper baulks, a tank, points, and a board with the 
inscription " No. 5." This was a station — a wayside 
station But "N"o. 6 is a Swindon of the desert. 
Every train stops there half-an-hour or more to fill 
up with water, for there is a great trifoliate well 
there. Also the train changes drivers. And here, a 
hundred miles into the heart of the Nubian desert, 
two years ago a sanctuary of inviolate silence, where 
no blade of green ever sprang, where, possibly, no 
foot trod since the birth of the world, here is a little 
colony of British engine-drivers. They have a little 
rest-house shanty of board and galvanised iron ; there 
are pictures from the illustrated papers on the walls, 
and a pup at the door. There they swelter and 
smoke and spit and look out at the winking rails and 
the red-hot sand, and wait till their turn comes to 
take the train. They don't love the life — who would? 
— but they stick to it like Britons, and take the trains 



30 THE S.M.B. 

out and home. They, too, are not the meanest of the 
conquerors of the Sudan. 

Towards dusk mimosa bushes, dotted park-wise over 
the sand, began to rise up on both sides of us, then 
palms; soon we were in a thickish scrub. The air 
cooled and moistened from death to life : we were 
back again on the Nile, at Abu Hamed. Thereafter 
we slept peacefully again, and awoke in the midst 
of a large camp of white tents. They unhooked the 
saloon, but the train crawled on, disgorging rails and 
sleepers, till it came to a place where a swarm of 
fellahin was shovelling up sand round the last metals. 
The naked embankment ran straight and purposeful 
as ever, so far as you could see. Small in the dis- 
tance was A white man with a spirit-lev@L 



IV 

THE correspondent's PROGRESS 

I SAT on a box of tinned beef, whisky, and othei 
delicacies, dumped down on a slope of loose sand. 
Eound me lay another similar case, a tent, bed, and 
bath, all collapsible and duly collapsed into a brown 
canvas jacket, two brown canvas bags containing 
saddlery, towels, and table-linen, a chair and a table 
lashed together, a wash-hand basin with shaving 
tackle concealed inside its green canvas cover, a 
brown bag with some clothes in it, a shining tin 
canteen, a cracking lunch-basket, a driving-coat, and 
a hunting-crop. On one side of me rose the em- 
bankment of the main line to Berber; fifty yards 
on it ended suddenly in the sand, and a swarm of 
Arabs were shovelling up more of it for their lives. 
On the other side of me, detached, empty, quite alone, 
stood the saloon which brought me from Haifa. It 
was going back again to-night, and then I should 
be quite loose and outcast in the smiling Sudan. 
I sat and meditated on the full significance of the 



32 THE GOBBESPONDENT'S FBOGBISS. 

simple military phrase, " line of communications." It 
IS the great discovery of the Sirdar that he has re- 
cognised that in the Sudan the communications are 
the essence and heart of the whole problem. And 
now I recognised it too. 

It was a long, long story already. I was now just 
at the threshold of what was regarded officially as the 
difficult part of the 1150 odd miles between Cairo and 
the front ; I was still seventy miles or so from Berber 
— and my problem, instead of just beginning, appeared 
just on the point of an abrupt and humiliating finish. 
The original question was how I was to get myself 
and my belongings to the front ; the threatened solu- 
tion was that I should get there, if at all, on my feet, 
and that my belongings would serve to blaze the track 
for anybody desperate enough to follow. 

I am not an old campaigner. The old campaigner, 
as you know, starts out with the clothes he stands 
up in and a tin-opener. The young campaigner pro- 
vides the change of linen and tins for the old cam- 
paigner to open. So in Cairo I bought everything 
I could think of as likely to palliate a summer in 
the Sudan. I wore out my patience and my legs a 
whole week in drapers' shops, and saddlers' shops, and 
apothecaries' shops, and tobacconists' shops, and tin- 
and-bottle shops, and general shops. I bought two 
horses and two nigger boys — one to look after the 
horses and one to look after me. One of them I 
bought through Cook, as one takes a railway -ticket ; 



NATIVE SERVANTS. 33 

the other suddenly dashed at me in the street with 
a bundle of testimonials unanimously stating that 
he could cook more or less, and clean things if he 
were shown how. Both wore tarbushes and striped 
nightgowns, and nothing else visible, which was 
natural ; though afterwards they emerged in all kinds 
of gorgeousness. What was inconvenient was that 
they neither of them understood any language I could 
talk, that they both had the same name, and that I 
could not for the life of me remember what it was. 
However, one was black with red eyes, and the other 
yellow with white; and it was something to know 
them apart. The black-and-red one originally alleged 
that he could talk English. It was true that he could 
understand a dozen words of that lingo if pronounced 
sloppily enough and put ungrammatically together. 
But when it came to his turn he could say "Yes, 
sir," and then followed it up with an inarticulate 
burble more like the sound of a distant railway train 
than any known form of human speech. 

Anyhow, I started. I started with the properties 
above named and six packages besides. Some went 
with me on the tourist boat ; others went by rail or 
post boat, or Government barge, to await me ; others 
stayed behind to follow me. I got to Assuan, and 
there a new trial awaited me. I had no camels, and 
it would be absurd to go to the Sudan without camels. 
Now I knew nothing at all of the points of a camel. 
nor of its market price, nor what it eats, nor could I 



34 THE correspondent's PEOGBESS. 

ride it. However, camels had to be bought, and I 
borrowed an interpreter, and went out to the Bisharin 
village outside Assuan and bought some. The in- 
terpreter said he knew all about camels, and that 
they were worth £27 a pair. 

First, though, they had to be tried. The Bisharin 
were all standing about grouped round little heaps of 
dry, cracked mud, which it took a moment's consider- 
ation to recognise as their houses. Their costume 
consisted mainly of their hair — in little tight plaits 
tumbling every way over their heads ; they have it 
done thus in infancy, and never take it out of curl : 
it looks like the inside hair of a horse's tail, where 
the brush can't get at it. They all talked at the 
same time, and gesticulated furiously. 

The first Bishari was a wizened old man, with 
a wisp or two of grey beard, a black shawl, and 
a large expanse of chest, back, arm, and leg, of 
a delicate plum-colour. With horrible noises he 
pulled* his camel down on to its knees. The camel 
made still more horrible noises ; it growled, and 
screeched, and snarled, and brayed, and gurgled out 
big pink bladders from its inside. Then the old man 
tied a pad of sackcloth on to the beast's hump by way 
of saddle, seized the halter, and leaped on sideways ; 
the camel unfolded its legs joint by joint and leaped 
forward. The old man whacked with a will, the 
camel bounded up and down, the old man bounced 
in his saddle like an india - rubber ball, his shawl 



B17TIN0 CAMEL& 35 

flapped out like wings, till all his body was native 
plum-colour. Then, suddenly, the camel gathered 
itself together and soared aloft — and the next thing 
was the old man flying up to heaven, slowly turning 
over, and slowly, then quickly, thudding to earth. 
Everybody roared with laughter, including the victim ; 
red was flowing fast over the plum-colour arm, but he 
didn't notice it. I bought that camel on the spot — to 
carry five hundredweight of baggage, not me. 

There was one other cropper before the trials were 
over, and two of the camels cantered and galloped 
round the mud warren in a way that made me 
tremble. However, I trusted to luck against the 
time when I might have to ride any of them, and 
bought with a light heart. I also bought two camel- 
men — ^a black, apparently answering to the name of 
Jujube, and a yellow, who asserted he was my groom's 
brother. The latter produced, with great pride, a 
written testimonial : it was from a British officer, to 
the effect that he had discharged the bearer, and 
would the Director of Transport kindly send him 
home. But I chanced that too; and now, with the 
exception of the few necessaries that were following 
me — and presumably are still — I was ready to march 
on Khartum. 

And now came in the question of the lines of com- 
munication. I went to the commandant of Assuan ; 
could he kindly send up my horses by steamer ? Y^ 
certainly, when there was a steamer to send them by. 



36 THE correspondent's PROGRESS. 

But steamers were few and much in request for 
railway stores and supplies. It was a question of 
waiting till there should appear military horses to go 
up river. Mine must go and stand in the camp 
meanwhile. Hurrah ! said I ; never mind about a 
few days : that was one load off my mind. So I 
hauled the horses out of the stable, and gave the syce 
some money, and a letter to say who he was, and 
peacefully left him to shift. 

Camels, being straggling and unportable beasts, 
could not go by boat; so I gave their attendants 
also money, and told them to walk to Haifa. Then 
I went to Haifa myself, and waited. 

At Haifa, knowing its name so well, I had expected 
to find a hotel. So there was one — the "Hotel des 
Voyageurs" — staring the landing-stage in the face. 
But it was a Greek hostelry, very small, a mile from 
the military post of Haifa, and at this stage I had a 
mind above Greek hotels. So I went to Walker & 
Co., tlie universal provider of Haifa. There was no 
immediate accommodation for correspondents. So I 
pitched my tent a little disconsolately in the com- 
pound, and sat down to wait until there was. 
Presently there was a room, and in that I sat down 
to wait for the camels. One day their attendant 
grinned in, and shook hands with me; the camels 
were accommodated with a bunk apiece in the garden, 
and I sat down again to wait for the horses. I waited 
many days and then wired; the commandant wired 



TRANSPORT DIFFICULTIES. 37 

back, " Your horses cannot go by steamer at present." 
When was "at present" going to end? So next I 
wired to Cook's agent to send them by road; he 
replied that they had started four days before. So 
far, so good. I sat down to wait some more. 

Only two days before they might be expected, on 
March 1, came the news that the British brigade 
had gone up to Berber, and that correspondents might 
go too. 

Hurrah again ! Only when, how ? O, you can 
go to-morrow in the saloon, of course, to rail-head. 
And beyond? Well, beyond you must take your 
chance. Can camels go by train? It was hardly 
likely. Horses? Not at present — and — well — you 
had better go very light. 

Clearly everything that was mine must take its 
chance too. I started the camels to walk across the 
desert — two hundred and thirty-four miles from Nile 
to Nile again — and told them to be quick about it. 
Of course they could never have done it, but that 
the traffic - manager kindly gave them authority to 
drink some of the engines' water on the way. I left 
orders to the horses to do the same; left all my 
heaviest goods lying about on the bank of the Nile ; 
definitely gave up all hope of the things that were 
supposed to be coming up after me; started, and 
arrived in the early morning of March 3. 

Now came the time to take my chance. And here, 
sure enough, comes a chocolate Arab, with the in- 



38 THE COBBBSFONDENT'S PBOGBESS. 

formation that he has any number of camels to let. 
The chance has turned out a good one, after all. But 
then comes along a fair Englishman, on a shaggy grey 
pony ; I was told he was the Director of Transport 
That's all right ; I'll ask his advice. Only, before I 
could speak, he suavely drew the attention of corres- 
pondents to the rule that any Arab hiring camels 
already hired by the army was liable to two years 
imprisonment. The news was not encouraging; and 
of course the Arabs swore that the army had not 
hired the best camels at all. I believed it at the 
time, but came to know the Arab better afterwards. 
Anyhow here I sat, amid the dregs of my vanishing 
household, seventy miles from Berber — no rail, no 
steamer, no horse, no camel. Only donkeys, not to be 
thought of — ^and, by George, legs! I never thought 
of them, but I've got 'em, and why not use 'em. 
I'll walk. 



I MARCH TO BERBER 

The donkeys had been hired, at war prices, about 
ten in the morning, delivery promised within an 
hour. At three in the afternoon two of us sweated 
over from the rail -head to the village, to try and 
hurry them up. Fifteen had been ordered ; five were 
nearly ready. The sheikh swore by Allah that all 
should be ready within an hour. At five we went 
over again. There were only four by now; the 
sheikh swore by Allah that the others should be 
ready within an hour. 

On that we began to threaten violence ; whereupon 
round a mud -wall corner trotted eighteen donkeys, 
followed by eight black men and a boy. Twenty-two ! 
It was late, but it was better than could be expected 
of any Arab. We kept them sedulously in our eye 
till we had them alongside the mountainous confusion 
of three correspondents' light baggage. Arrived at 
the scene of action, they sat down with one consent 
and looked at it. 



40 I MARCH TO BEEBER. 

The only way to hurry an Arab is to kill him, 
after which he is useless as a donkey-driver; so we 
sat down too, and had some tea, and looked at them. 
Presently they made it known that they had no 
rope. A rope was produced and cut into lengths; 
each took one, and sat and looked at it. Finally 
arose an old, old man, attired in a rag round his head 
and a pair of drawers : with the eye of experience he 
selected the two lightest articles, and slowly tied 
them together. Example works wonders. There was 
almost a rush to secure the next smallest load, and 
in ten minutes everything was tied together and slung 
across the little pack-saddles, except one load. This 
they looked at for a good long time, reluctant to get 
a piece of work finished ; at last they felt justified in 
loading this on also. 

We were ready: we were actually about to start. 
Gratitude and wonder filled my soul. 

Three men, nine Arabs, nine more to see them off, 
twenty»two donkeys — and. Heaven forgive me, I had 
almost forgotten the horse. That is to say, his owner 
applied to him an Arab word which I understood to 
mean horse — plural before he was produced, singular 
when it was no longer possible to allege that there 
was more than one of him. Experts opined that he 
might in the remote past liave been a dervish horse — 
a variation from the original type, produced by never 
feeding the animal His teeth, what remained of 
them, gave no clear evidence of his age, but on a 



A VETERAN STEED. 41 

general view of him I should say he was rising ninety. 
Early in the century he was probably chestnut, but 
now he was partly a silver chestnut and partly pre- 
sented no impression of colour at all: he was just 
faded. He wore a pessimistic expression, a coat about 
an inch and a quarter long, an open saddle sore, and 
no flesh of any kind in any corner. We ofifered him 
fodder — something like poor pea-halm and something 
like string, only less nutritious. He looked at it 
wearily, smelt it, and turned in perplexity to his 
master as if asking instructions. He had forgotten 
what food was for. 

The young moon was climbing up the sky when 
we set off. "With chattering and yells the donkeys 
and Arabs streamed out on to the desert track. The 
first load came undone in the first five minutes, and 
every one had to be readjusted in the first hour. The 
Arab, you see, has only been working with donkeys 
for ten thousand years or so, and you can't expect 
him to have learned much about it yet. But we kept 
them going. I was rearguard officer, with five Arabic 
words, expressing "Get on" in various degrees of 
emphasis, and a hunting-crop. 

"We only marched three hours to camp that night, 
but by the time we off-loaded in a ring of palms, with 
the Nile swishing below and the wind swishing over- 
head, we had earned our dinner and some sleep : had 
we not induced Arabs to start ? And now came in 
one of the conveniences — so far the only one — of 



42 I MABCH TO BEBB)EB. 

travelling in the Sudan. " Three angarebs," said the 
correspondent of experience ; and back came the ser- 
vants presently with three of the stout wooden frames 
lashed across with thongs that form the Sudan bed: 
you can get them anywhere there is a village — as 
a rule, to be sure, there is none — and they are luxuri- 
ous beyond springs and feathers. 

At half-past one I opened my eyes and saw the 
moon stooping down to meet the fringe of palm leaves. 
The man of experience sat up on his angareb and cried 
Awake." They did awake : three hours' sleep is not 
long enough to make you sleepy. We loaded up by 
the last moonlight, and took the road again. For 
nearly three hours the rustling on our right and the 
line of palms showed that we kept to the Nile bank ; 
then at five we halted to water the donkeys — they eat 
when they can and what they can — and started for a 
long spell across the desert. Grey dawn showed us a 
gentle swell of stony sand, hard under foot ; freshness 
came with it to man and beast, and we struck forward 
briskly. 

When the sun came up on us, I saw the caravan 
for the first time plainly; and I was very glad we 
were not likely to meet anybody I knew. My kit 
looked respectable enough in the train, and in Berber 
it went some way to the respectable furnishing of a 
house. But as piled by Sudanese Arabs on to donkeys 
it was disreputable, dishevelled, a humiliation beyond 
blushes. The canteen, the chair and table that had 



A PICTURESQUE CARAVAN. 43 

looked so neat and workmanlike, on the donkey be- 
came the pots and sticks of a gipsy encampment. My 
tent was a slipshod monstrosity, my dressing-case 
blatantly secondhand, my washing basin was posi- 
tively indecent. To make things worse, they had 
trimmed my baggage up with garbage of their own 
— dirty bags of dates and cast-off clothing. They 
mostly insisted on riding the smallest and heaviest- 
laden donkeys themselves, jumping at a bound on 
to the jogging load of baggage with four legs patter- 
ing underneath, and had to be flogged off again. And 
to finish my shame, here was I trudging behind, 
cracking and flicking at donkeys and half-naked black 
men, like a combination of gipsy, horse - coper, and 
slave-driver. 

But we travelled. Some of the donkeys were 
hardly bigger than collies, and their drivers did all 
that laziness and ineptitude could suggest to keep 
them back; but we travelled. It came to my turn 
of the horse about half-past six or so: certainly he 
was not a beast to make comparisons on, but the 
donkeys left him behind unless you made him trot, 
which was obviously cruel. I should say they kept 
up four miles an hour with a little driving. 

We gave ourselves an hour at eight for breakfast, 
and the end of the march was in soft sand under a 
cruel sun. It was not till nearly one that the camel 
thorn — all stalk and prickles, no leaves — gave way 
to palms again, and again we looked down on the 



44 I MABCH TO BBBBEB. 

Nile. A single palm gives almost as much shade 
as an umbrella with the silk off, but we found four 
together, and a breeze from the river, and a drink — 

that first drink in a Sudan camp ! — and lunch and 
a sleep, and a tub and tea, and we reflected on our 
ten hours' march and were happy. At five we 
joggled off again. 

We lost the place we had intended to camp at, and 
the desert began to get rugged and to produce itself 
ever so far both ways, like the parallel lines in Euclid, 
and we never got any farther forward on it. It got 
to be a kind of treadmill — we going on and the desert 
going back under us. But at last we did get to a 
place — didn't know its name, nor cared — and went to 
sleep a little more. And in the pale morning by 
happy luck we found two camels, and two of us 
trotted joyously forward past swimming mirages and 
an endless string of ruined mud villages into mud 
Berber. The donkeys were not much behind either: 
they did about seventy miles in forty-two hours. But 

1 am afraid it must have been the death of the horse, 
and I am sorry. It seems a cruelty to kill him just as 
he was beginning to be immortal 



VI 



THE SIRDAR 



Major-General Sib Horatio Herbert Kitchener ia 
forty-eight years old by the book ; but that is irrele- 
vant. He stands several inches over six feet, straight 
as a lance, and looks out imperiously above most men's 
heads ; his motions are deliberate and strong ; slender 
but firmly knit, he seems built for tireless, steel- wire 
endurance rather than for power or agility : that also 
is irrelevant. Steady passionless eyes shaded by de- 
cisive brows, brick -red rather full cheeks, a long 
moustache beneath which you divine an immovable 
mouth; his face is harsh, and neither appeals for 
affection nor stirs dislike. All this is irrelevant too : 
neither age, nor figure, nor face, nor any accident of 
person, has any bearing on the essential Sirdar. You 
could imagine the character just the same as if all the 
externals were different He has no age but the prime 
of life, no body but one to carry his mind, no face 
but one to keep his brain behind. The brain and the 
will are the essence and the whole of the man — a 



46 TH2 SIBDAS. 

brain and a will so perfect in their workings that, 
in the face of extremest difficulty, they never seem 
to know what struggle is. You cannot imagine the 
Sirdar otherwise than as seeing the right thing to do 
and doing it. His precision is so inhumanly unerring, 
he is more like a machine than a man. You feel that 
he ought to be patented and shown with pride at 
the Paris International Exhibition. British Empire: 
Exhibit No. I., hors concours, the Sudan Machine. 

It was aptly said of him by one who had closely 
watched him in his office, and in the field, and at 
mess, that he is the sort of feller that ought to be 
made manager of the Army and Navy Stores. The 
aphorist's tastes lay perhaps in the direction of those 
more genial virtues which the Sirdar does not possess, 
yet the judgment summed him up perfectly. He 
would be a splendid manager of the Army and Navy 
Stores. There are some who nurse a desperate hope 
that he may some day be appointed to sweep out the 
War Office. He would be a splendid manager of the 
War Office. He would be a splendid manager of 
anything. 

But it so happens that he has turned himself to the 
management of war in the Sudan, and he is the com- 
plete and the only master of that art. Beginning life 
in the Eoyal Engineers — a soil reputed more favour- 
able to machinery than to human nature — he early 
turned to the study of the Levant. He was one of 
Beaconsfield's military vice-consuls in Asia Minor ; he 



FIFTEEN YEARS OF EGYPT. 47 

was subsequently director of the Palestine Explora- 
tion Fund. At the beginning of the Sudan troubles 
he appeared. He was one of the original twenty-five 
officers who set to work on the new Egyptian army. 
And in Egypt and the Sudan he has been ever since — 
on the staff generally, in the field constantly, alone 
with natives often, mastering the problem of the 
Sudan always. The ripe harvest of fifteen years is 
that he knows everything that is to be learned of his 
subject. He has seen and profited by the errors of 
others as by their successes. He has inherited the 
wisdom and the achievements of his predecessors. He 
came at the right hour, and he was the right man. 

Captain K.E., he began in the Egyptian army as 
second-in-command of a regiment of cavalry. In 
Wolseley's campaign he was Intelligence Officer. Dur- 
ing the summer of 1884 he was at Korosko, negoti- 
ating with the Ababdeh sheiks in view of an advance 
across the desert to Abu Hamed ; and note how 
characteristically he has now bettered the then 
abandoned project by going that way to Berber and 
Khartum himself — only with a railway ! The idea of 
the advance across the desert he took over from Lord 
Wolseley, and indeed from immemorial Arab caravans ; 
and then, for his own stroke of insight and resolu- 
tion amounting to genius, he turned a raid into an 
irresistible certain conquest, by superseding camels 
with the railway. Others had thought of the desert 
ro\ite : the Sirdar, correcting Korosko to Haifa, used 



48 THE SIRDAK. 

it. Others had projected desert railways : the Sirdar 
made one. That, summarised in one instance, is the 
working of the Sudan machine. 

As Intelligence Officer Kitchener accompanied Sir 
Herbert Stewart's desert column, and you may be 
sure that the utter breakdown of transport which 
must in any case have marred that heroic folly was 
not unnoticed by him. Afterwards, through the long 
decade of little fights that made the Egyptian army, 
Kitchener was fully employed. In 1887 and 1888 he 
commanded at Suakim, and it is remarkable that his 
most important enterprise was half a failure. He 
attacked Osman Digna at Handub, when most of the 
Emir's men were away raiding; and although he 
succeeded in releasing a number of captives, he 
thought it well to retire, himself wounded in the 
face by a bullet, without any decisive success. The 
withdrawal was in no way discreditable, for his force 
was a jumble of irregulars and levies without dis- 
cipline. • But it is not perhaps fanciful to believe that 
the Sirdar, who has never given battle without mak- 
ing certain of an annihilating victory, has not for- 
gotten his experience of haphazard Bashi-Bazouking 
at Handub. 

He had his revenge before the end of 1888, when 
he led a brigade of Sudanese over Osman's trenches at 
Gemaizeh. Next year at Toski he again commanded 
a brigade. In 1890 he succeeded Sir Francis Gren- 
fell as Sirdar. That he meant to be Sirdar in fact as 



THE SUDAN MACHINE. 49 

well as name he showed in 1894. The young Khe- 
dive travelled south to the frontier, and took the 
occasion to insult every British officer he came across. 
Kitchener promptly gave battle : he resigned, a crisis 
came, and the Khedive was obliged to do public 
penance by issuing a General Order in praise of the 
discipline of the army and of its British officers. 
Two years later he began the reconquest of the 
Sudan. Without a single throw-back the work has 
gone forward since — but not without intervals. The 
Sirdar is never in a hurry. With immovable self- 
control he holds back from each step till the ground 
is consolidated under the last. The real fighting 
power of the Sudan lies in the country itself — in its 
barrenness which refuses food, and its vastness which 
paralyses transport. The Sudan machine obviates 
barrenness and vastness: the bayonet action stands 
still until the railway action has piled the camp with 
supplies or the steamer action can run with a full 
Nile. Fighting men may chafe and go down with 
typhoid and cholera : they are in the iron grip of the 
machine, and they must wait the turn of its wheels. 
Dervishes wait and wonder, passing from apprehension 
to security. The Turks are not coming ; the Turks 
are afraid. Then suddenly at daybreak one morning 
they see the Sirdar advancing upon them from all 
sides together, and by noon they are dead. Patient 
and swift, certain and relentless, the Sudan machine 
rolls conquering southward. 



50 THE SIRDAB. 

In the meantime, during all the years of preparation 
and achievement, the man has disappeared. The man 
Herbert Kitchener owns the affection of private 
friends in England and of old comrades of fifteen 
years' standing; for the rest of the world there is 
no man Herbert Kitchener, but only the Sirdar, 
neither asking affection nor giving it. His officers and 
men are wheels in the machine : he feeds them enough 
to make them efficient, and works them as mercilessly 
as he works himself. He will have no married offi- 
cers in his army — marriage interferes with work. 
Any officer who breaks down from the climate goes 
on sick leave once : next time he goes, and the Egyp- 
tian army bears him on its strength no more. Asked 
once why he did not let his officers come down to 
Cairo during the season he replied, "If it were to 
go home, where they would get fit and I could get 
more work out of them, I would. But why should I 
let them down to Cairo ? " It is unamiable, but it 
is war, Ind it has a severe magnificence. And if you 
suppose, therefore, that the Sirdar is unpopular, he is 
not. No general is unpopular who always beats the 
enemy. When the columns move out of camp in the 
evening to march all night through the dark, they 
know not whither, and fight at dawn with an enemy 
they have never seen, every man goes forth with a 
tranquil mind. He may personally come back and 
he may not ; but about the general result there is not 
a doubt. You bet your boots the Sirdar knows: he 



A BBILLIA17T GABEBB. 61 

wouldn't fight if he weren't going to win. Other 
generals have been better loved ; none was ever better 
trusted. 

For of one human weakness the Sirdar is be- 
lieved not to have purged himself — ambition. He 
is on his promotion, a man who cannot afford , to 
make a mistake. Homilies against ambition may be 
left to those who have failed in their own: the 
Sirdar's, if apparently purely personal, is legitimate 
and even lofty. He has attained eminent distinction 
at an exceptionally early age : he has commanded vic- 
torious armies at an age when most men are hoping 
to command regiments. Even now a junior Major- 
General, he has been intrusted with an army of six 
brigades, a command such as few of his seniors have 
ever led in the field. Finally, he has been charged 
with a mission such as almost every one of them 
would have greedily accepted, — the crowning triumph 
of half a generation's war. Naturally he has awak- 
ened jealousies, and he has bought permission to take 
each step on the way only by brilliant success in the 
last. If in this case he be not so stiffly unbending to 
the high as he is to the low, who shall blame him ? 
He has climbed too high not to take every precaution 
against a fall. 

But he will not fall, just yet at any rate. So far 
as Egypt is concerned he is the man of destiny — the 
man who has been preparing himself sixteen years for 
one great purpose. For Anglo -Egypt he is the 



52 THB SIBDAB. 

Mahdi, the expected ; the man who has sifted experi- 
ence and corrected error; who has worked at small 
things and waited for great ; marble to sit still and fire 
to smite ; steadfast, cold, and inflexible ; the man who 
has cut out his human heart and made himself a 
machine to retake Khartuio. 



VII 



ARMS AND MEN 



The campaign of 1897, which opened with Genera! 
Hunter's advance from Merawi on Abu Hamed, 
ended with the occupation of the Nile valley as far 
as Ed Darner, seven miles beyond the junction of that 
river and the Atbara. At the beginning of March, 
when I reached the front, the advanced post had 
been withdrawn from Ed Darner, which had been 
destroyed, and established at Fort Atbara in the 
northern angle of the two rivers. Between that 
point and Berber, twenty -three miles north, was 
stationed the army with which it was proposed to 
meet the threatened attack of Osman Digna and 
Mahmud. 

It was not possible to use the whole force at the 
Sirdar's disposition for that purpose. The Anglo- 
Egyptian strategical position was roughly a semi- 
circle, with Omdurman and Khartum for a centre, so 
that the Khalifa held the advantage of the interior. 
The westward horn of the semicircle was the 



54 AilMS AND MEN. 

garrisons of Dongola, Korti, and Merawi ; the east- 
ward that of Kassala. In advance of the regular 
garrisons, friendly Arabs held a fan -shaped series 
of intelligence posts in the Bayuda desert, and at 
Adarama, Gos Eedjeb and El Fasher on the upper 
reaches of the Atbara. The Dervishes maintained 
one desert post at Gebra to the north-west of Omdur- 
man, and one to the north-east at Abu Delek. But 
hemmed in as they were, they had the manifest 
advantage that they could always strike at the newly 
recovered province of Dongola by the various routes 
across the Bayuda desert. So that Korti and Merawi 
had to be garrisoned, as well as Kassala. 

The garrisons, though they never so much as saw 
the enemy, played, nevertheless, an indispensable part 
in the Atbara campaign. The infantry of the force 
immediately under the Sirdar's eye was divided into 
four brigades — three Egyptian, one British. The divi- 
sion of the Egyptian army, counting three brigades, 
was undef the command of Major-General Archibald 
Hunter. 

If the Sirdar is the brain of the Egyptian army, 
General Hunter is its sword-arm. Eirst and above 
everything, he is a fighter. Eor fourteen years he 
has been in the front of all the fighting on the 
Southern border. He was Intelligence Of&cer dur- 
ing the anxious days before Ginnis, when the 
Camerons and 9th Sudanese were beset by tri- 
ujaaph^xit dervishes in Kosheh fort, and reinforce- 



MAJOB-GENERAL HtTNTBB. 55 

ments were far to the northward. Going out on a 
sortie one day, he lingered behind the retiring force 
to pick off dervishes with a rifle he was wont to 
carry on such occasions : there he received a wound 
in the shoulder, which he is not quit of to-day. 
"When Nejumi came down in '89, Hunter was in 
the front of everything : he fought all day at the 
head of the blacks at Argin, and commanded a 
brigade of them at Toski. Here he was again 
wounded — a spear-thrust in the arm while he was 
charging the thickest of the Dervishes at the head 
of the 13th. Thereafter he was Governor of the 
frontier at Haifa, Governor of the frontier at Don- 
gola. Governor of the frontier at Berber — always on 
the frontier. When there was fighting he always led 
the way to it with his blacks, whom he loves like 
children, and who love him like a father. Fourteen 
years of bugle and bullet by night and day, in sum- 
mer and winter, fighting Dervishes, Dervishes year in 
and year out — till fighting Dervishes has come to be 
a holy mission, pursued with a burning zeal akin to 
fanaticism. Hunter Pasha is the crusader oi the 
nineteenth century. 

In all he is and does he is the true knight-errant 
— a paladin drifted into his wrong century. He is 
one of those happy men whom nature has made all 
in one piece — consistent, simple, unvarying; every- 
thing he does is just like him. He is short and thick- 
set ; but that, instead of making him unromantic, only 



66 ASMS AND MEN. 

draws your eye to his long sword. From the feather 
in his helmet to the spurs on his heels, he is all energy 
and dancing triumph ; every movement is vivacious, 
and he walks with his keen conquering hazel eye look- 
ing out and upward, like an eagle's. Sometimes you 
will see on his face a look of strain and tension, which 
tells of the wound he always carries with him. Then 
you will see him lolling under a palm-tree, while his 
staff are sitting on chairs ; light-brown hair rumpled 
over his bare head, like a happy schoolboy. When I 
first saw him thus, being blind, I conceived him a 
subaltern, and offered opinions with indecorous free- 
dom: he left the error to rebuke itself. 

Eeconnoitring almost alone up to the muzzles of 
the enemy's rifles, charging bare-headed and leading 
on his blacks, going without his rest to watch over the 
comfort of the wounded, he is always the same — 
always the same impossible hero of a book of chivalry. 
He is renowned as a brave man even among British 
officers: -you know what that means. But he is 
much more than a tilting knight -errant; he is one 
of the finest leaders of troops in the army. Ee- 
port has it that the Sirdar, knowing his worth, 
leaves the handling of the actual fighting largely to 
Hunter, and he never fails to plan and execute a 
masterly victory. A sound and brilliant general, you 
would say his one fault was his reckless daring ; but 
that, too, in an army of semi-savages, is a necessary 
quality of generalship. Furthermore, they say he ui 



"OLD MAC." 67 

as good in an oiB&ce as he is in action. Above, all, 
he can stir and captivate and lead men. " General 
Archie" is the wonder and the darling of all the 
Egyptian army. And when the time comes that 
we want a new national hero, it may be he will be 
the wonder and the darling of all the Empire also. 
The First Brigade of Hunter's division was still 
Quartered in Berber. It consisted of the 9th Sudanese 
mider Walter Bey, 10th Sudanese (ISTason Bey), 11th 
Sudanese (Jackson Bey), and 2nd Egyptian (Pink 
Bsj). The brigadier was Lieutenant-Colonel Hector 
.4i«hibald Macdonald, one of the soundest soldiers in 
1^8 Egyptian or British armies. He had seen more 
^d more varied service than any man in the force. 
FS'omoted from the ranks after repeated and con- 
Spcuous acts of gallantry in the Afghan war, he was 
taken prisoner at Majuba Hill. He joined the Egyp- 
lian army in 1887, and commanded the 11th Sudanese 
at Gemaizeh, Toski, and Afafit. At Gemaizeh the 
11th, ever anxious to be at the enemy, broke its 
formation; and it is said that Macdonald Bey, after 
gshausting Arabic and Hindustani, turned in despair 
to abusing them in broad Scots. Finally, he rode up 
and down in front of their rifles, and at last got them 
steady under a heavy fire from men who would far 
rather have killed themselves than him. In the cam- 
paigns of '96 and '97 he was intrusted with a brigade ; 
he showed a rare gift for the handling of troops, and 
wherever the fighting was hardest there was his 



58 AEMS AND MSN. 

brigade to be found. In person, " old Mac " — he is 

under fifty, but anything above forty is elderly in the 
Egyptian army — is of middle height, but very broad, — 
so sturdily built that you might imagine him to be 
armour-plated under his clothes. He walks and rides 
with a resolute solidity bespeaking more strength than 
agility. He has been known to have fever, but never 
to be unfit for duty. 

The Second Brigade also consisted of three Sudanese 
battalions and one Egyptian — the 12th, 13th, and 
14th Sudanese (Townshend, CoUinson, and Shekleton 
Beys), and the 8th Egyptian under Kiloussi Bey, a 
soldierly old Turk who was through the Eusso-Turkish 
war. Lieutenant-Colonel Maxwell commanded it — 
an ofl&cer who has served in the Egyptian army 
through all its successes; big, masterful, keen, and 
reputed an especially able military administrator, he 
is but just entering middle age, and ought to have a 
brilliant career before him. This brigade was quar- 
tered at' Essillem, about half-way between Berber and 
the Atbara. 

At the Atbara was Lieutenant-Colonel Lewis with 
an all -Egyptian brigade — the 3rd, 4th, and 15th, 
under Sillem, Sparkes, and Hickman Beys, and the 
7th under Eathy Bey, a big, smiling Egyptian of great 
energy and ability, a standing contradiction of the 
theory that a native Egyptian can never make a 
smart officer. The brigadier is one of the most 
popular officers in this or any other army. Colonel 



LEWIS BET. 59 

Lewis's talents and abounding vitality would have 
led him to distinction in any career. From the fact 
that he is affectionately known as " Taffy," it may be 
deduced that he is in whole or part a Welshman — 
certainly he is richly dowered with the vivacity, the 
energy, and the quickness of uptake of the Celt. 
He treats his staff and subordinates like younger 
brothers, and discipline never suffers, I have heard 
him say that he is always talking, but he is also 
always very much worth listening to. Finally, I 
once went into a store in Berber and proposed to 
buy tinned Brussels sprouts. "But are they fit to 
eat ? " I asked, in sudden doubt. " Oh yes, sir," cried 
the unshaven Greek, with enthusiasm ; " Lewis Bey 
likes them very much." 

Taking the strength of a battalion at 700 rifles, 
each infantry brigade would number 2800 men. To 
these we must add the cavalry under Lieutenant- 
Colonel Broadwood, a rapid, adroit, and daring 
leader : long-legged, light, built for a horseman, never 
tired, never more than half asleep, never surprised, 
never flurried, never slow, he is the ideal of a 
cavalry general The Egyptian trooper is a being 
entirely unlike anything else in the world. What 
miracles of patience and tact, toil and daring, have 
been devoted to him will never be known; for the 
men who did it will not tell. The eight squadrons, 
with galloping Maxims, were at this time divided 
between the three Egyptian camps. So were five 



60 ASMS AND MEN. 

batteries of artillery, the command of which was 
with Lieutenant-Colonel Long — slow of speech, veil- 
ing a passionate tenderness for guns and a deadly 
knowledge of everything pertaining to them. Finally, 
there were two companies of camel corps with the 
Third Brigade. The whole strength of the Egyptian 
force would thus fall not very far short of 10,000 men, 
with 46 guns. Operating from Port Atbara were also 
three gunboats. 

One mile north of the Second Brigade, Major- 
General Gatacre's British were encamped at Debeika. 
At this time it had only three battalions — the 1st 
Lincolnshire (10th) under Colonel Verner, 1st Cameron 
Highlanders (79th) under Colonel Money, and 1st 
Warwickshire (6th) under Lieutenant-Colonel Quayle- 
Jones. The 1st Seaforth Highlanders (72nd : Colonel 
Murray) were under orders, as we heard, to come up 
and complete the brigade. Besides the infantry, there 
was a battery of Maxims under Major Hunter-Blair. 
The brigade was as fine a one as you could well pick 
out of the army, whether for shooting, average of 
service, or strength. Two companies of the Warwicks 
had been sent, to their despair, to Merawi ; but even 
so the strength of the brigade must have been over 
2500. 

General Gatacre came up with a great reputation, 
which he seized every occasion to increase. His one 
overmastering quality is tireless, abounding, almost 
superhuman energy. From the moment he is first 



"GENERAL BACK-ACHSR." 61 

out of his hut at reveille to the time when he goes 
nodding from mess to bed at nine, he seems possessed 
by a demon that whips him ever into activity. Of 
middle height and lightly built, his body is all steel 
wire. As a man he radiates a gentle, serious courtesy. 
As a general, if he has a fault it lies on the side of 
not leaving enough to his subordinates. Eestless 
brain and body will ever be at something new — 
working out a formation, riding hours across country 
looking for a camp, devising means to get through a 
zariba, personally superintending the making of a 
road, addressing the men after church parade every 
Sunday. In the ranks they call him "General 
Back-acher," and love him. "He is the soldier's 
general," I have heard rapturous Tommy exclaim, 
when the brigadier has been satisfying himself in 
person that nobody wanted for what could be 
obtained. Later on in the campaign some thought 
he drove his officers and men a little hard. But 
whatever he asked of them in labour and discomfort 
he was always ready to double and treble for him- 
self. 

This, then, was the Sirdar's command — a total of 
12,000 to 13,000 men, with 52 guns. The Seaforths 
might be expected to add about 1000 more. All 
numbers, I should here remark, are based on the 
roughest estimates, as, by the Sirdar's wish, they were 
never stated publicly. In any case, there was not much 
doubt that the force was sufficient to account hand- 



62 ABMS AND MSN. 

somely for anything that was likely to come against 
it. Whether the dervishes were even coming at 
all was not at this time very certain. It was known 
that Mahmud had taken over his force from 
Metemmeh, which had hitherto been his head- 
quarters, to join Osman Digna at Shendi on the 
eastern bank. That was evidence that the attack, 
if it was coming, would fall on us rather than the 
Merawi side. Osman's men, it was further reported, 
had begun to drift northward in detachments ; though 
whether this meant business or not it was hard to 
say. It seemed difficult to believe that they had let 
Berber alone last autumn and winter when it was 
weakly garrisoned, only to attack now, when attack 
must mean annihilation. But you must remember 
the peculiarities of Arab information. The ordinary 
Arab spy is as incurious about figures as the Sirdar 
himself could desire ; " few " and " very few," " many " 
and " very many," are his nearest guesses at a total. 
It was not at all certain that Mahmud and Osman, 
though they probably knew that reinforcements had 
come up, had the vaguest idea of the real strength of 
the force. 

Finally, said those who remembered, this was just 
like Toski over again. Whispers and whispers for 
months that the horde was coming; disappointment 
and disappointment ; and then, just when doubt was 
becoming security and the attempt madness, a head- 



OSMAN DI6NA. 63 

long rush upon inevitable destruction. Such follies 
issue from the very nature of the Mahdist polity 
— a jealous ill-informed despot safe at Omdurman 
and ill -supplied Emirs apprehensive at the front 
Therefore we hoped for the best. What their force 
might be, of course we knew hardly better than 
they knew ours. It might be 10,000, or 15,000, or 
20,000. 

If they came they would fight: that was certain. 
How they would fight we knew not. It depended 
on Mahmud. Osman Digna has become a common- 
place of Sudanese warfare — a man who has never 
shown himself eminent either for personal courage 
or for generalship, yet obviously a man of great 
ability, since by evasive cunning and dogged per- 
sistence he has given us more trouble than all the 
other Emirs together. His own tribe, the Hadendowa, 
the most furious warriors of Africa, are long since 
reconciled with the Government, and have resumed 
their old trade of caravan -leading. That Osman 
struggles on might fancifully be traced to his strain 
of Turkish blood, contributing a steadfastness of 
purpose seldom found in the out-and-out bar- 
barian. He has become a fat old toad now, they 
say, and always leaves fights at an early stage for 
private prayer; yet he is still as much alive as 
when he threw up a position on the Suakim 
County Council to join the Expected Mahdi, and 



64 ASMS AND MEN. 

you cannot but half admire the rascal's persistence 
in his evil ways. 

Had Osman been in command, he doubtless knew 
too much to risk a general engagement. But it 
seemed that the direction of things lay mainly with 
Mahmud, And of Mahmud, but for the facts that he 
was a social favourite in Omdurman, was comparatively 
young, and had wiped out the Jaalin for the KhaKfa, 
nobody — except probably Colonel Wingate — knew 
anything at all. 

Whatever there was to know, Colonel Wingate 
surely knew it, for he makes it his^ business to know 
everything. He is the type of the learned soldier, in 
which perhaps our army is not so strong as it is on 
Other sides. If he had not chosen to be Chief of 
the Intelligence Department of the Egyptian Army, 
he might have been Professor of Oriental Languages 
at Oxford. He will learn you any language you like 
to name in three months. As for that mysterious 
child of ^iies, the Arab, Colonel Wingate can converse 
with him for hours, and at the end know not only how 
much truth he has told, but exactly what truth he has 
suppressed. He is the intellectual, as the Sirdar is 
the practical, compendium of British dealings with the 
Sudan. With that he is himself the most practical 
of men, and few realise how largely it is due to the 
system of native intelligence he has organised, that 
operations in the Sudan are now certain and unsur- 
prised instead of vague, as they once were. Nothing 



COLONEL WINGATB. 66 

is hid from Colonel Wingate, whether in Cairo or at 
the Court of Menelik, or on the shores of Lake Chad. 
As a press censor he has only one fault. He is so in- 
dispensable to the Sirdar that you can seldom get 
speech of him. His rise in the army has been almost 
startlingly rapid ; yet there is not a man in it but, so 
far from envying, rejoices m a success earned by rare 
gifts and unstinted labour, and borne with an inviol- 
able modestj. 



VIII 



IN THE BRITISH CAMP 



Beyond doubt it was a great march. If only these 
had been a fight immediately at the farther end of 
it, it would have gone down as one of the great 
forced-marches of history. 

News came to Abu Dis of Mahmud and Osman 
Digna's advance on a Friday afternoon, February 
25 ; the men were just back from a sixteen - mile, 
seven-and-a-half-hour route-march in the desert. By 
eight next morning the last detachment had been con- 
veyed by; train to rail-head, which had been moved 
on past their camp to Surek; by ten at night the 
brigade was on the march. They marched all night ; 
in the early morning came a telegram bidding them 
hasten, and they marched on under the Sudan sun 
into the afternoon. A short halt, and at three on 
Monday morning they were off again. At ten that 
night they got into Geneineteh, and were out again 
by three next morning. Six hours' march, seven 
hours' halt, eight hours' march again, and they were 



A GREAT MAECH. 67 

close to Berber. And there they learned that the 
Dervishes had after all not arrived. A halt of twenty- 
four hours outside Berber rather damaged the record ; 
but that was better than damaging the troops. Not 
but that they were quite ready to go on ; it was by 
the Sirdar that the halt was ordered. They reached 
Berber — cheering blacks lining two miles of road, and 
massed bands playing the Cameron men, and the 
Lincolnshire poacher, and "Warwickshire lads, and 
especially a good breakfast for everybody — and 
marched through to their camp ten miles beyond. 

They started out on Saturday night, February 26 ; 
they reached camp on Thursday evening, March 3. 
Altogether they made 118 miles within five days — 
four, if you leave out the day's halt — or 134 in five 
and a half, if you also add the route-march; con- 
tinuously they did 98 miles within three days. 

That is marching. Furthermore, it was marching 
under nearly all conditions that make marching a 
weariness. In India troops on the march have a 
host of camp-followers to do the hard and disagree- 
able work. Of course, you and I could easily walk 
twenty-five miles a day for as long as anybody liked 
to name. But how would you like to try it with kit 
and rifle and a hundred rounds of ammunition ? Also, 
when you did halt, how would you like to have to 
set to work getting wood to make your fire and water 
to cook your dinner ? How would you like to march 
with baggage-camels, so slow that they poach all your 



68 IN THE BRITISH CAMP. 

sleep ? Especially, how would you like to be a cook 
— to come in tired and sweating, hungry and thirsty, 
and then stand out in the sun preparing dinner for 
your comrades ? On the first three days' march some 
of the cooks got no more than four hours' sleep, and 
had to be relieved lest they dropped at their posts ; 
few of the officers got more. Plenty of men went to 
sleep while marching ; others dropped with weariness 
and vigil, like a boxer knocked stupid in a fight. One 
subaltern, being with baggage in the rear-guard, fell 
off his camel without noticing it, and went on peace- 
fully slumbering in the sand. He woke up some time 
in the dead of night, and of course had not the vaguest 
idea where the army had gone to or in which direc- 
tion he ought to follow it. He had hung his helmet 
and belts on the camel, which of course had gone on 
composedly, only glad to get rid of him. He was 
picked up by a man who was looking for somebody 
else. 

A guni^er in the Maxim battery had a worse time. 
He too dropped asleep, and woke up to find himself 
alone. He found himself near the river, and went 
on to overtake the force. Only unluckily — so mag- 
nificently unreasoning can the British soldier some- 
times be — he followed down the stream instead of 
up. On top of that, he conceived an idea that he 
was in the enemy's country, with prowling dervishes 
ambushed behind every mimosa bush. So that while 
search parties quested for him by day, he carefully 



THB BOOT SCANDAL. 69 

hid himself, and at night pushed on again to- 
wards Cairo. It was several days before he was 
picked up. 

AH these are inevitable accompaniments of a forced 
march ; what might have been avoided, and should 
have been, was the scandal that the men's boots gave 
out. True, the brigade had done a lot of marching 
since it came up-country, some of it — not much — 
over rock and loose sand. True, also, that the Sudan 
climate, destructive of all things, is particularly de- 
structive of all things stitched. But the brigade had 
only been up-river about a month, after all, and no 
military boot ought to wear out in a month. We 
have been campaigning in the Sudan, off and on, for 
over fourteen years; we might have discovered the 
little peculiarities of its climate by now. The Egyptian 
army uses a riveted boot ; the boots our British boys 
were expected to march in had not even a toe-cap. 
So that when the three battalions and a battery 
arrived in Berber hundreds of men were all but bare- 
foot : the soles peeled off, and instead of a solid double 
sole, revealed a layer of shoddy packing sandwiched 
between two thin slices of leather. Not one man fell 
out sick ; those who dropped asleep went on as soon 
as they came to, and overtook their regiments. But 
every available camel was burdened with a man who 
lacked nothing of strength or courage to march on — 
only boots. General Gatacte had half-a-dozen chargers; 
every one was carrying a bare -footed soldier, while 



70 m THE BEITISH CAMP. 

the general trudged with his men. All the mounted 
officers did the same. 

It is always the same story — knavery and slackness 
clogging and strangling the best efforts of the British 
soldier. To save some contractor a few pence on a 
boot, or to save some War Office clerk a few hours of 
the work he is paid for not doing, you stand to lose a 
good rifle and bayonet in a decisive battle, and to 
break a good man's heart into the bargain. Is it 
worth it ? But it is always happening ; the history 
of the Army is a string of such disgraces. And each 
time we arise and bawl, " Somebody ought to be 
hanged." So says everybody. But nobody ever is 
hanged.* 

^ A certain stir followed the publication of these criticisms in 
England, penetrating as far as the House of Commons, and even the 
War Office. The official reply to them vras in effect that the boots 
were very good boots, only that the work done by the brigade over 
bad ground had tried them too severely. It is a strange sort of answer 
to say that a military boot is a very good boot, only you mustn't 
march in it. Having walked myself over most of the same ground 
as General ^atacre's brigade, I am able to say that, while there is a 
good deal of rock and loose sand, the greater part of the going is 
hard sand or gravel. The boots I wore myself I have on at the 
moment of writing, as sound as ever. 

It is possible that the War Office is right, and that for other 
purposes in other countries the boots supplied were very good boots, 
But in the Sudan, what with the drought and the fine cutting sand, 
everything in stitched leather goes to pieces with heart-breaking 
rapidity. It is to be presumed that our authorities could have 
discovered this fact : in the Egyptian army it is known perfectly 
well. 

After Mr Powell Williams had more than once implied in the 
House that there was no foundation for the criticisms in the text, 



A SEYEEB KEGImE. 71 

That these men came so sturdily through the teat 
stands to everybody's credit, but especially their 
brigadier's. From the day he took up his command 
General Gatacre set to work to make his men hard. 
Amazing stories floated down to Haifa, rebuking us 
with the stern simplicity of life at rail-head — no drink, 
perpetual marching, sleep every night in your boots. 
The general, we heard, had even avowed that he meant 
to teach his men to march twenty miles without water- 
bottles. He would merely halt them from time to 
time and water them — most wisely, since the soldier 
either swigs down all his water in the first hour, and 
is cooked for the rest of the day, or else, if he thinks 
he is in for a short march, pours the confounded thing 
out on the sand to lighten it. A most wise thing — 
if you can do it. For some of the old inhabitants 
of the Sudan shook their heads when they heard such 
tales. " He'll get 'em stale," said they ; " wait till the 
hot weather ; in this country you must make yourself 
comfortable." They were probably right — they knew ; 
and for myself, I intended to give comfort the fullest 
possible trial. But so far the fact stood that the 

Lord Lansdowne, in hia speech announcing the proposed transmogri- 
fication of the Army Medical Services, gave away the War Office's 
case in the following terms : " The Egyptian campaign had brought 
to light one weak point which we could not afford to ignore. The 
Army boot, although a good boot, was apparently unsuited to resist 
the peculiar and insidious action of the desert sand. ... He 
trusted they would be able to invent a boot which even General 
Gatacre and the desert sand would not be able to wear out." 
— (' Daily Mail ' Keport, May 5.) 



73 IN THE BRITISH CAMP. 

British had done their work brilliantly, and that their 
brigadier trained them to it. 

When my camel padded into their camp by moon- 
light the day's work was done, and they were going to 
sleep. You came to the camp through a tangle of 
thick mimosa ; a zariba of the same impossible thorns 
was heaped up all round it ; the men were quartered 
along the river overlooking the foreshore. There was 
only time to be grateful for supper, and a blanket spread 
under the lee of a straw-plaited hut. Next thing I 
knew reveille was sounding, at a quarter past five. 
Directly on the sound stepped out the general — middle 
height, build for lightness and toughness together, 
elastic energy in the set of each limb, and in the keen, 
grave face a determined purpose to be equal to re- 
sponsibility. He stayed to drink a cup of cocoa, and 
then mounted, and was away with his aide-de-camp ; 
General Gatacre's aide-de-camp requires to be a hard 
man. When breakfast-time came the general was no- 
where in camp, nor was he an hour later, nor an hour 
later still. He had just taken a little twenty-five 
mile scamper to look out a new site for his camp. 

At reveille the camp had suddenly turned from dead 
to alive. You heard hoarse orders, and the ring of 
perpetual bugles. The dry air of the Sudan cracks 
the buglers' lips, as it does everybody else's ; to keep 
them supple they were practising incessantly, so that 
the brigade ia wrapped in bugling best part of the 
day. To-day it was also wrapped in something else. 



AN ILL-CHOSEN SITB. 73 

It seemed to me that daylight was very long in com- 
ing — that lines of khaki figures seemed to pass to and 
fro in an unlifting mist. But that was only for the 
first few sleepy moments. As the north wind got up 
with the sun it soon became very plain what was the 
matter. 

Dust ! The camp was on land which had once been 
cultivated, black cotton land ; and black cotton land 
when the wind blows is neither wholesome nor agree- 
able. It rose off the ground till the place was like 
London in a fog. On the horizon it lowered like 
thunder-clouds; close about you it whirled up like 
pepper when the lid of the castor comes off. You 
felt it, breathed it, smelt it, tasted it. It choktd 
eyes and nose and ears, and you ground it between 
your teeth. After a few hours of it you forgot what 
being a man was like ; you were merely clogging into 
a lump of Sudan. 

-It was a bad mistake to pitch on such a spot; and 
when you came to walk round the camp you saw how 
ill-equipped were the men to put up with it. Their 
heavy baggage — officers' and men's alike — had been 
left at rail-head ; over 2500 men had come with 700 
camels. The tents had arrived, but they were only 
just being unloaded from the steamer. The men were 
huddled under blankets stretched on four sticks; of 
the officers, some had tents, others sat in tiny elbow- 
squeezing tukls (huts of straw or rushes), such as the 
prophet Jonah would not have exchanged for his 



74 m THE BRITISH CAMP. 

gourd. There was hardly a shelter in the camp in 
which a man could stand upright. One or two good 
tukls had been built — wooden posts with beams lashed 
across them, and mats or coarse stems of half a grass 
plaited between. But, taking the place as a whole, 
it was impossible to be comfortable, and especially 
impossible to be clean. 

It was nobody's fault in particular, and in this good 
weather it did not particularly matter. It happened 
not to have begun stoking up at the time ; when it likes 
it can be mid-summer in March. When it did begin, 
and especially if it came to a matter of summer 
quarters, such a camp as Debeika was an invitation 
to disease and death. You have to learn the Sudan's 
ways, they say, if you do not want the Sudan to eat 
you alive. The British brigade had to learn. Sure 
enough the Sirdar came to inspect it the day after, 
and on March 11 the brigade shifted camp to the 
empty and relatively clean village of Darmali, two 
miles higher up the river. 



IX 



FORT ATBARA 



It needed only half a look at the Egyptian camp to 
convince you how much the British had to learn. The 
hospitable dinner-table was quite enough. In accord- 
ance with a detestable habit which I intend to correct 
in future, I arrived late for dinner : it was the fault of 
the camels, the camel-men, the servants, the guide, my 
companions, the country, and the weather. None the 
less kindly was I set down at table and ate of soup 
and fish, of ragout and fresh mutton and game, and 
was invited to drink hock, claret, champagne, whisky, 
gin, lime-juice, ginger- beer, Eosbach, and cognac, or 
any combination or permutation of the same. I was 
the guest of men who have been on the Sudan 
frontier for anything up to fifteen years, during which 
time they have learned the Sudan's ways and over- 
come its inhospitality. 

As soon as everybody began to show signs of falling 
asleep at table — which hot days begun at four or five 
in the morning and worked hard through till half -past 



76 FORT ATBAEA. 

seven soon lead you to consider the most natural 
phenomenon in the world — I went to bed under a 
roof. The owner of the tukl was up the river, ofl 
Shendi, on a gunboat. His house was palatially built 
with painted beams from the spoils of a raid on 
Metemmeh, and plaited with palm -leaf and halfa 
grass. Other of&cers preferred their tents ; but the 
insides of these were sunk anything from one foot to 
four underground, the excavation neatly backed with 
dried Nile mud, so that a ten-foot tent became a lofty 
and airy apartment. The last thing I saw was a vast 
upstanding oblong tukl, which looked capable of hold- 
ing a company. I was told it was the house of the 
mess-servants of one Egyptian battalion. It was more 
palatial than all the edifices in the British camp put 
together. 

In the morning it was blowing a sand-storm, and 
Englishmen's eyes showed bloodshot through blue 
spectacles. It was gritty between the teeth, and to 
walk u^ wind spelt blindness ; yet it was clean sand, 
and did not form soil in the mouth like the black 
dust of Debeika. In the early morning Fort Atbara 
appeared through the driving cloud as through smoked 
glass — a long walled camp, with its southern apex 
resting on the junction of Nile and Atbara. To find 
so strong a place in the lately won wilderness was 
a revelation, not of English energy, which is under- 
stood, but of Egyptian industry. The wall was over 
six feet high, firmly built of sun-dried mud ; round it 



A MONUMENT OF EGYPTIAN INDUSTRY. 77 

had been a six-foot ditch, only the importunate sand 
had already half silted it up again. On the inside 
was a parapet, gun platforms with a couple of care- 
fully clothed Maxims in each, a couple of guard-houses 
at the two main gates and a couple of blockhouses 
outside. Across the Atbara was a small fort ; at the 
angle of the rivers a covered casemate gallery that 
would accommodate half a company precluded any 
attempt to turn the wall and attack from the fore- 
shore. On the other side of the Nile was a smaller 
fort, walled and ditched likewise. In the inside 
straddled a crow's nest — built also with painted beams 
from Mahmud's house in Metemmeh — with a view that 
reached miles up both rivers. A couple of miles up 
the Atbara you could see dense mimosa thickets ; so 
much of the bank as could get water has dropped 
back almost to virgin forest in the fourteen years of 
dervish devilry. But under the walls of Fort Atbara 
was neither mimosa nor Sodom apple nor any kind 
of scrub. Only a forest of stumps showed where the 
field of fire had been cleared — over a mile in every 
direction. Upright and regular among the stumps 
you could see a row of stakes ; each marked a range 
of 100 yards up to 500 : the Egyptian soldier was 
to hold his fire up to that and gain confidence by 
seeing his enemy go down. Best of all, the fort, though 
it dominated the country for miles, was itself hardly 
visible. From the ridge of the desert a mile away it 
was a few trees, the yardarms of a few sailing barges, 



78 FORT ATBAEA. 

and a shelter trench. The whole dervish army might 
easily have been persuaded to run their heads on it ; 
but they might have butted in vain against Eort 
Atbara till there was not one of them left standing. 

The whole of this work had been made by the men 
who garrisoned it. There were none but Fellahin 
regiments in Fort Atbara; but the Egyptian soldier 
on fatigue duty is the finest soldier in the world. 
In a population of ten millions the conscription 
only asks for 20,000 men or so, and it can afford to 
pick and choose. In face the fellah soldier is a shade 
sullen, not to say blackguardly ; in body he would be 
a joy to a sculptor. Shorter than the taller tribes of 
blacks, taller than the shorter, he is far better built 
all round. When he strips at bathing-time — for like 
all riverine peoples he is more clean than bashful — the 
bank is lined with studies for Hercules. And all the 
thews he has he puts into his work. Work is the 
fellah's idea of life, especially work with his native 
mud: tlie fatigue which other soldiers incline to 
resent as not part of their proper business he takes to 
most kindly of all his soldiering. Marching, digging, 
damming, brick-making, building, tree-felling — ^you can 
never find him unwilling nor leave him exhausted. He 
is the ideal soldier-of -all-work, true son of a country 
where human hand -labour has always beaten the 
machine. 

The troops were housed either in post -and -straw 
tukls or in tents ; but already a vast mud - brick 



SKETCH MAP OF THE NILE AND ATBAEA 

TO ILLUSTRATE THE OPERATIONS AGAINST MAHMOUD 

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QUEEN CITY OF THE SUDAN. 79 

barrack stretched its skeleton across the camp. 
Along the foreshore the mud huts were hospital or 
officers' quarters or mess -houses. Already one big 
straw tukl was a caf6, where enterprising Greeks had 
set up a soda-water machine and instituted a diiwr dil 
jov/r. And down on the beach the cluster of slim- 
sparred gyassas and the little street of box-and-mat 
built Greek shops marked the beginning of a town. 
As railway terminus, for this year at present, an 
American might almost call it the queen city of the 
Sudan. Only for the present it must be a city with- 
out native population ; for the inhabitants of this reach 
are very few, and subsist on precarious subsidies paid 
them for protecting each other against the raids of 
the dervish. 

Among the craft at the riverside the first you 
noticed was the gunboat. White, with tall black 
funnel amidships, deck above deck and platform top- 
ping platform, it looked more like a building than a 
warship. But for all their many storeys these gun- 
boats draw only some two feet of water, while the 
loftiness of the gun-platforms enables them to search 
the highest bank at the lowest state of Nile. Ahead 
on the uppermost deck points the hungry muzzle of 
a gun; there are a couple more amidships, and a 
couple of Maxims on a dizzy shaking platform higher 
yet. 

The war fleet at this time counted three stem- 
wheelers — the ZajMT (Commander Keppel, RK), Faiha 



80 FORT ATBARA. 

(Lieutenant Beatty, E.N.), and Nasa (Lieutenant Hood, 
E.N.) Three more — the Malik (King), Sultan, and 
Sheikh — were down the river, waiting for their sec- 
tions to be put together against high Nile. Fort 
Atbara was the Portsmouth of the Sudan: one of 
Captain Keppel's squadron always lay there, taking 
a week in its turn to rest and repair anything 
needful. The other two would be always up the 
river — one cruising off Shendi, and the other patrol- 
ling the seventy miles of river between. If neces- 
sary the boats could run past Shendi, forty milea 
more, to Shabluka, so that they acted as reconnoitring 
parties more than a hundred miles from the moat 
advanced military post. 

Naval operations have played a part in Sudan 
warfare ever since Gordon's time : was not " the 
Admiral " himself on Beresford's Zafia through those 
famous - infamous days which saw the tantalising 
tragedy of Khartum? Here, as elsewhere, the 
Sirdar has gathered up the experience of the past 
and brought it to full development. Everybody told 
him that he would never get the gunboats over the 
Fourth Cataract : a general who had been there in 
the Wolseley days delivered a lecture demonstrating 
unmercifully the mad impossibility of the scheme. A 
day or two after the Sirdar sent the boats over. To 
be sure one turned turtle in the attempt, and a naval 
lieutenant was fished out three-quarters drowned, and 



WHAT THE GUNBOATS DID. 81 

two Egyptians had to be cut out through the bottom 
of the boat. Yet here were three vessels steaming up 
and down unperturbed, right under Mahmud's nose. 
The value of their services it would be quite impos- 
sible to exaggerate : they were worth all the rest of the 
Intelligence Department put together. From their 
reports it was known that the dervishes had crossed to 
Shendi and were coming down the river. Moreover, 
you may imagine that officers of her Majesty's navy did 
not confine their activity to looking on. A day or two 
before this Mahmud had been transferring his war 
material in barges from Metemmeh to Shendi. 
Knowing the ways of " the devils," as they amiably 
call the gunboats, he had entrenched a couple of hun- 
dred riflemen to cover the crossing. But one boat 
steamed cheerfully up to the bank and turned on the 
Maxims, while the other sunk one nuggar and captured 
two. A fourth lay in quite shallow water under the 
very muzzles of the dervish rifles. But on each boat 
are carried about half a company of Egyptian troops 
with a white officer. While the Maxims poppled 
away above them, the detachment — it was of the 15th 
Egyptians on this occasion — landed and cut out the 
nuggar before its owners' eyes. With men capable of 
such things as this about on the river, it was only by 
drilling a hole in the bottom of their boats and sink- 
ing them during the day that the dervishes could 
keep any craft to cross the river in at all. 



82 FOBT ATBABA. 

The second day at Fort Atbara I stepped out after 
lunch, and there were two white sweltering gunboats 
instead of one. Everybody who had nothing else to 
do hurried as fast as the heat would let them down to 
the river. There the first thing they saw was an 
angareb being laboriously guided ashore by four native 
soldiers : on it lay a white man. He was a sergeant 
of marines, shot in the leg while directing the fire of 
the forward Maxim. " The devils have hit me," they 
said he cried out, with justly indignant surprise as he 
felt the bullet, then jumped to the gun and turned it 
himself on the quarter the shot came from. That was 
in the early morning; now he was very pale and a 
little limp, but smiling. Then came down the doctor 
hastily. "Didn't I say he wasn't to be brought 
ashore?" he said. "All right, sir," answered the 
wounded man, still resolutely smiling ; " I expect I'm 
in for hospital anyhow." And away to hospital they 
bore him, for the boat would be up river again by 
dawn the next day. 

Meantime the detachment of soldiers were stepping 
ashore with cheerful grins. It was easy to see how 
valuable was this gunboat work in giving the 
Egyptians confidenca True, they had lost one man 
wounded and had a few chips knocked off the stern- 
wheel ; but had they not landed at Aliab — thirty miles 
from Fort Atbara — driven off the dervishes, and 
captured donkeys and loot? The loot was being 



AN EXCITING SEEVICB. 83 

unladen at the moment — an aiigareb or two and odd 
garments, especially many bundles of rough riverside 
hay. " Take that up to my old horse," said the 
lieutenant in command, satisfaction in his tones. " Is 
there any polo this afternoon ? " 

It was hard to say whether this work best siute*^, 
the young naval officer or the young naval officer best 
suited the work. Steaming up and down the river in 
command of a ship of his own, bombarding here, 
reconnoitring there, landing elsewhere for a brush 
with the dervishes, and then again a little way farther 
to pick up loot, — the work had all the charm of war 
and blockade-running and poaching combined. If a 
dervish shell did happen to smash the wheel where 
would the boat be, perhaps seventy miles from any 
help? It was said the Sirdar was a little nervous 
about them, and to my inexperience it was a perpetual 
wonder that the boats came back from every trip. 
But somehow, thanks to just a dash of caution in their 
audacity, they always did come back. Impudently 
daring in attack, with a happy eye to catch the latest 
moment for retreat, they were just the cutting -out 
heroes of one's youth come to life. They might have 
walked straight out of the * Boy's Own Paper.' 

Every returning boat brought fresh news of the 
advance. Dervishes at Aliab, even if not in force, 
could not but mean a movement towards attack. It 
was quite impossible to wear out the hospitality of 



84 FORT ATBABA. 

Fort Atbara, but duty began to wonder what the rest 
of the army was doing. So I recaptured my camel — 
peacefully grazing in the nearest area of dervish raid, 
and very angry at being called on to work after three 
days of idleness — and bumped away north towards 
Berber. 



THE MARCH OUT 

Alas for the Berber season — for the sprightly promise 
of its budding, the swift tragedy of its blight ! 

It would have been the most brilliant social year 
the town has ever known, Berber is peculiarly fitted 
for fashionable display : its central street would hold 
four Eegent Streets abreast, and the low mud walls, 
with one-storeyed mud-houses just peeping over them, 
make it look wider yet. On this magnificent avenue 
the merchant princes of Berber display their rich 
emporia. Mortimer, Angelo, Walker, and half-a-dozen 
ending in -poulo, had brought caravans over the 
desert from Suakim, until you could buy oysters and 
asparagus, table-napkins and brilliantine, in the 
middle of the Sudan. Then there are the cafis, — 
"OfiBcers' Club and Mineral "Waters" is the usual 
title of a Sudan cafi, — where you could drink mastik 
and kinds of whisky, and listen to limpid streams of 
modern Greek from the mouths of elegants who shave 
twice and even three times a-week. There at sun- 



86 THE MASCH OUT 

down sat the native officers on chairs before the door^ 
every breast bright with the ribbons of hard victorious 
campaigns; talking their ancestral Turkish and drink- 
ing drinks not contemplated by the Koran. There 
were five regiments in garrison, and more outside; 
the town was alive with generals, and the band played 
nightly to the Sirdar's dinner. 

There was flavour in the sensation of sitting at 
dinner under the half-daylight of the tropic moon, 
kicking up black -brown sand, looking into a little 
yard with an unfenced sixty-foot undrinkable well in 
one corner and a heat-seamed mud wall all round it, 
and listening to a full military orchestra wailing for 
the Swanee Ribber, or giggling over the sorrows of 
Mr Gus Elen's friend, who somehow never felt 'isself 
at 'ome. For myself, I was just beginning to be very 
much at home indeed. It was a splendid house to 
share among three, one of the most palatial in Berber 
— two rooms as high as an English double-storeyed 
villa, doorway you could drive a hansom through, two 
window-holes in one room and one in the other, bricks 
of the finest quality of Nile mud, and roof of mats 
that never let in a single sunbeam. A fine house ; and 
we had further embellished it with two tables — they 
cost a couple of pounds apiece, timber and carpenters 
being scarce in Berber — five shelves, a peg, and eight 
cane - bottomed bedroom chairs, brought across the 
desert in sections. In a fortnight our entertainments 
would have been the talk of Berber, and now 



BERBER — OLD AITD NEW. 87 

To-night the High Street was as bare and bald, 
Berber as desolate and forlorn, as old Berber itself. 
Old Berber, you must know, is the Berber which was 
before the Mahdists came and took it and besomed 
it with three days' massacre. It stands, or totters, 
some half mile south of the present dervish-built town. 
Palms spread their sunshades over it, and it is em- 
bosomed in the purple-pink flower, white-green bush, 
and yellow-green fruit of Sodom apples. At a dis- 
tance it is cool luxury ; ride into it, and it is only the 
sun-dried skeleton of a city. In what was once the 
bazaar the bones are thickest: here are the empty 
sockets out of which looked the little shops — all silent, 
crumbling, and broken. Altogether there are acres 
and acres of Old Berber — quite dead and falling away, 
not a single soul in the whole desolation. But when 
the Egyptian army first came last year there were 
bodies — bodies left thirteen years unburied, and dry 
wounds yawning for vengeance. 

New Berber to-day was hardly less forlorn. On 
the morning of March 15, the few passengers down 
the High Street all carried arms. Here was a man 
on a fleet camel: he would have sold it the day be- 
fore for £20; now no price would tempt his Arab 
covetousness into parting with his possible salvation. 
Here strode a tall man with white gown kilted up 
above black legs: he carried a Kemington rifle, and 
with his free hand pushed before him a donkey bear- 
ing a bundle and a bed. An angareb is the first 



88 THE MARCH OUT. 

luxury of the Sudan: Egyptian soldiers, when an- 
garebs are looted, can hardly be restrained from 
taking them away on their backs. This man was 
removing wardrobe and furniture together on one 
donkey. Down at the riverside every boat was busy ; 
the natives were crossing over to the islands and to 
the western bank. Down at the landing-stage, three 
miles north of the town, where the hospital was and 
the post-office, and whither the telegraph was now 
removed, the 1st Battalion, now to form all the garri- 
son of Berber, was building a fort. 

And in their stores and cafis in the High Street, 
with twitching faces, sat the Greeks. They explained 
in half -voices that they could not move their stock 
because they had 400 camel-loads, and there were not 
ten camels to be bought in all Berber, They com- 
mented on the strange strategy that aims at beating 
the enemy rather than at protecting property. They 
even made a deputation to the Sirdar on the point; 
but his "Excellency pursued his own plan, and merely 
served out Kemingtons to the traders. Whereat the 
Greeks pointed out that the rifles and a few cases of 
wine and tinned meat against their doors would make 
them impregnable ; and then fell to twitching again. 

What it was all about, nobody among the outsiders 
knew. But we presumed that the gradual crescendo 
of intelligence as to the dervish advance had resulted 
in the decision that it was better to be in position too 
early than too late. The Sirdar left early on the 15th; 



A SPLENDID BATTALION. 89 

the greater part of the garrison — Macdonald's fighting 
brigade of blacks — had cleared the town the evening 
before and marched for Kenur, the point of concen- 
tration, when the moon rose at one in the morning. 
I saw the start of the 9th, the first black battalion 
raised ; and fine as are many of our British regiments, 
these made them look very small. The Sudanese 
battalions, as has been said, are enlisted for life, and 
every black, wherever he may be found, is liable, as 
such, for service. I have seen a man who was with 
Maximilian in Mexico, in the Russo - Turkish War, 
across Africa with Stanley, and in all the later 
Egyptian campaigns, and who marches with his 
regiment yet. However old the black may be, he 
has the curious faculty of always looking about eigh- 
teen: only when you thrust your eyes right in his 
face do you notice that he is a wrinkled great-grand- 
father of eighty. But always he stands as straight as 
a lance. 

Not that the 9th average that age, I take it ; or ii 
they do, it does not matter. Their height must 
average easily over six feet. They are willowy in 
figure, and their legs run to spindle-shanks, almost 
ridiculously; yet as they formed up on parade they 
moved not only with the scope that comes from 
length of limb, but the snap of self - controlled 
strength as well. 

They love their soldiering, do the blacks, and take it 
very seriously. When they stood at attention they 



so THE MAECH OUT. 

might have been rows of black marble statues, all 
alike as in the ancient temples, filling up the little 
square of crumbling mud walls with a hole in its 
corner, so typical of the Berber landscape. Then the 
English colonel snapped out something Turkish : in an 
instant the lines of each company had become fours ; 
all turned with a click ; the band crashed out a 
march — barbaric Ethiopian, darky American, or Eng- 
lish music-hall, it is all the same to the blacks — and 
out swung the regiment. They moved off by com- 
panies through a narrow alley, and there lay four new- 
killed goats, the sand lapping their blood. Every 
officer rode, every man stepped, over the luck token ; 
they would never go out to fight without it. Then 
out into the main street, every man stepping like a 
conqueror, the band blaring war at their head ; with 
each company a little flag — blue, black, white, amber, 
or green, or vermilion — on a spear, and half-way down 
the column the colour the Camerons gave them when 
they shared the glory of Ginnis. Boys trailed behind 
them, and their women, running to keep up, shot after 
them the thin screams that kindle Sudanese to victory. 
A black has been known to kill himself because his 
wife called him a coward. To me the sight of that 
magnificent regiment was a revelation. One has got 
accustomed to associate a black skin with something 
either slavish or comical. From their faces these men 
might have been loafing darkies in South Carolina or 
minstrels in St James's Hall. But in the smartness 



UNAFRAID "LIKE THB ENGLISH." 91 

of every movement, in the pride of every private's 
bearing, what a wonderful difference ! This was quite 
a new kind of black — every man a warrior from his 
youth up. " Lu-u-u, lu-u-u," piped the women ; the 
men held up their heads and made no sound, but you 
could see the answer to that appeal quivering all down 
the column. For " we," they say, " are like the English ; 
we are not afraid." 

And is it not good to think, ladies and gentlemen, 
as you walk in Piccadilly or the Mile End Eoad, that 
every one of these niggers honestly believes that to be 
English and to know fear are two things never heard 
of together? Utterly fearless themselves, savages 
brought up to think death in battle the natural lot of 
man, far preferable to defeat or disgrace, they have 
lived with English officers and English sergeants, 
through years of war and pestilence, and never seen 
any sign that these are not as contemptuous of death 
as themselves. They have seen many Englishmen die; 
they have never seen an Englishman show fear. 



XI 



THE CONCENTRATION 



At the time I was disposed to blame the Mess Presi- 
dent, but on calm reflection I see that the fault lay 
with the nature of the Arab. We knew that the 
Sirdar was to start early on the 15th on the eighteen- 
mile ride to Kenur, and it was our purpose to travel 
shortly behind him. The only restrictions, I may say 
at once, laid upon correspondents during this campaign 
were that they were not to go out on reconnaissances, 
and especially not to go near the Sirdar. They were 
advisecf not to stand in front of the firing line during 
general actions, but even this was not insisted upon. 
It did indeed require a fair deal of tact and agility to 
keep out of the Sirdar's eye, since his Excellency had 
a wearing habit of always appearing at any point 
where there was anything of interest going on. But 
practice soon brought proficiency, and for the rest the 
correspondent, except when he had to work, enjoyed 
by far the most enviable position in the army. 

Therefore we had planned to start as soon as the 



THB HUMOURS OF TEANSPOBT. 93 

Sirdar was out of sight, and arrive just after he had 
disappeared into his quarters. "We rose up at five and 
gloomily began to dismantle our home. We carted 
the tables and the chairs into the yard ; we tore down 
the very shelves : who could tell when they would not 
be useful ? By seven breakfast was over ; the horses 
and camels were grouped around our door in the High 
Street ; the bags and cases were fastened up and lying 
each on the right side of its right camel. There was 
nothing left but the chairs and the tables and the 
shelves and a bucket, and the breakfast things and a 
, case to put them in. At eight I went out to see how 
things were looking; they were looking exactly the 
same, a question of precedence having arisen as to 
whose duty it was to wash up. At nine they were 
still the same, and we expostulated with the men : 
they said they were just ready. At ten the chairs 
and tables and breakfast things and camels were still 
lying about, and the men had disappeared. At eleven 
they had not returned. At twelve they condescended 
to return, and, adjourning the question of washing up, 
began packing the breakfast things dirty. At this 
point each man separately was called a dog, fined 
a pound, and promised fifty lashes. They received the 
judgment with surprised and wounded but respectful 
expostulation : what had they done ? They had merely 
been in the bazaar a very little while, thou Excel- 
lency, to buy food. By this time we were getting 
hungry ; so, rather than delay the loading up, we went 



94 THE CONCENTRATION. 

to a Greek cafi and lunched on ptomained sardines 
and vinegar out of a Graves bottle. When we got 
back things were exactly as we had left them: the 
men suavely explained that they had been lunching 
too. At last at half -past one every camel had been 
loaded and stood up ; and then it was discovered that 
all the chairs were being left behind. It became 
necessary to catch camels one by one, climb up them, 
and, standing on neck or hump, to tie two chairs 
apiece on to them. While the second was being done, 
the first walked away and rubbed himself against a 
wall, and knocked his chairs off again. Every one of 
the men rushed at him with furious yells ; the second 
camel, left to himself, waddled up to the wall with an 
absent-minded air, and rubbed off his chairs. 

At this point — about two in the afternoon, six hours 
after the contemplated start — human nature could 
bear it no longer. With curses and blows we told 
them to follow immediately if they valued their lives, 
and rode on. That was all they wanted. Looking 
back after a hundred yards we saw every camel loaded 
up and starting. If we had stayed behind we should 
never have got off that night. If we had ridden on 
six hours before we should not have been delayed. 
One time is as good as another to the Arab as long as 
he feels that he is wasting it. Give him half an hour 
and he wiU take an hour ; allow him six hours and he 
will require twelve. 

But of course by this time it was hopeless to expect 



HOW CAMELS AKB LOADED. 95 

that the baggage would make eighteen miles by dark. 
At Essillem, a dozen miles out, we found Colonel 
Maxwell's brigade with all its baggage packed, waiting 
only camels to move on too. At Darmali we found 
exactly the same state of things. General Gatacre's 
never-failing hospitality produced dinner, after which 
we fell in with the disposition of the rest of the army, 
and waited for camels too. At ten, just as we were 
going to sleep in the sand in the middle of the main 
street of the village, they loafed up, very cheerful, and 
feeling quite sure that they would be neither fined 
nor flogged. Had they not covered thirteen miles in 
a trifle under eight hours ? 

Then suddenly I was awake again, at the shy meet- 
ing of a quarter-moon and dawn. The beginning of 
what I knew, after my boy came to my chilly bed- 
chamber under a wall and said reveille was about to 
sound, was a monstrous confusion of camels. You 
could see that the ground was strewn with vague, 
shapeless, swaying lumps, with smaller, more agile 
shadows crawling over them. What they were was 
very plain from the noises : the camels had arrived. 
The camel, when it is a question of either working or 
leaving off work — so magnificently impartial is his 
stupidity — can protest in any voice from a wolf's snarl 
to the wail of an uncomforted child. As each camel 
was loaded it jerked up its towering height and tower- 
ing load — one of ours this time, I blush to say, was 
two sacks of barley, a deal table, and all the eight 



95 THE CONCENTRATION. 

cane-bottomed chairs, waving their legs at the moon ; 
and a weirdly disreputable sight it was — and then it 
was the next camel's turn to howl. It is a wonderful 
sight camels being loaded up, with buckets and table- 
legs and baths and tea-kettles, hung round them as if 
they were Christmas-trees ; but one soon has enough 
of it. So I left them trying to eat the hospital stores, 
and rode slowly out into the twilight. 

Outside the zariba a heavy black snake was forging 
slowly along the desert road ; when I came nearer it 
changed into a centipede; then the centipede had a 
kilt on, and finally it divided into the Cameron High- 
landers. In front of them were the Warwicks, behind 
them the Maxim battery — four guns with carriages 
and three mules tandem, two on tripods and one mule 
to carry the whole gun — and the Lincolns ; the whole 
brigade was on the march. Only seventy-five men of 
each regiment remained, to their indignation, as guard 
for the stores that the camels must make a second 
journey ^o fetch. As for the heavy baggage, that was 
put in the houses of the village and left to its fate. 
Officers started with 30-lb. kit, and men with 9-lb. 
Scarcity of camels perhaps justified the abandonment, 
but with the thermometer already 100° in the shade, it 
meant a lot of hardship. 

After a month and a half of General Gatacre, five 
miles with rifle and ammunition and 9-lb. kit is very 
much the same to the British soldier as walking down- 
stairs to breakfast is to you. They were just getting 



BUILDING A ZABEBA. 97 

into their stride when the sun rose. The orange ball 
stepped up over the desert sky-line briskly and all in 
one piece, plainly intending to do a good day's work 
before he lay down again— and behold, we were at 
Kenur. Behold, also, the Sirdar's flag, white star and 
crescent on red, borne by one of three orderlies. Be- 
fore it rode the Sirdar himself, in white apparel, fresh 
and cool, also like one who has his work before him 
and knows how it is done, and means to do it. The 
British halted. There was a word and a rattle, and 
the battalions which had been formed in one long 
column, four abreast, were marching oflf at right angles 
in columns of a company apiece. In no space and 
no time the whole brigade had tucked itself away 
and taken up its quarters. And hardly had the 
British left the road clear than in swung the second 
black brigade from Essillem. 

These were different, many of them, from the lank 
soldiers of the 9th — short and stubby, plainly of other 
tribes ; but whether the black has seventy-eight inches 
or sixty, every one of them is a soldier. They tramped 
past with their untirable bands drumming and blow- 
ing beside them ; in a couple of hours they had cut 
their mimosa and made their zariba, and all the Der- 
vishes in the Sudan would not be too many for them. 
The British, too, were out all day in the sun, at the 
same work, every man with his rifle on his back. It 
had warmed up a little more now — though 100° in 
the dry Sudan is not near so hot as it would be in 



98 THE CONCENTRATION. 

England — but the British stuck to their work like 
men, and their zariba, a word unknown to them two 
months back, was every bit as straight, and thick, and 
prickly as the natives'. 

And now we were concentrated, and only waited for 
them to come on. And, wonderful beyond all hope, 
they were coming on. The indispensable gunboats, 
tirelessly patrolling the river, kept the Sirdar fully 
informed of everything. On Shebaliya Island, forty 
miles south of the Atbara, they had slung an angareb 
aloft between a couple of spars. The Dervishes' route 
led within twelve hundred yards of it. There they 
passed everlastingly — men, women, and children; 
horses, goats, and donkeys, singing and braying, flying 
their banners, thrumming their war-drums, booming 
their melancholy war -horn. And on the angareb, 
under an umbrella, sat a man and counted them. 
There was reason to hope that they were little short 
of 20,000. 

Conformably with the traditions of the gunboat 
service, things did not stop at counting. On the 13th 
Bimbashi Sitwell and a section of the 4th Egyptians 
landed from the Fatha, Lieutenant Beatty's boat, and 
attacked a large force which had crossed to the island. 
There were about 1000 Dervishes and 40 Egyptians, 
but neither of the united services saw anything 
irregular in the proceedings. In face of the swarm 
of enemies Bimbashi Sitwell led his men into a ditch, 
whence they kept up a steady fire. Suddenly he felt 



TEIUMPHAITT AUDACITY. 99 

a tremendous blow on his shoulder ; he thought one 
of the soldiers had let his rifle out of hand, but turn- 
ing round to swear, found himself on his back. Then 
he heard the voice of Lieutenant Beatty, E.N. : " It's 
all right," it said ; " we're doing 'em proper." " Make 
it so," he replied nautically, and then, hearing a new 
burst of fire from the right, " You'd better order up a 
few more file, and turn them out of that." The next 
thing he knew, after the blank, was that they were 
turned out of that, and that 38 of them were dead, 
which was very nearly one each for the 40 Egyptians. 
Bimbashi Sitwell had a well-furnished pair of shoul- 
ders. The bullet ran through both, but missed the 
spine. Four days after, he was receiving visitors at 
Fort Atba,ra in pyjamas and a cigarette. Which was 
a happy issue to perhaps the most staggeringly auda- 
cious of all the audacities perpetrated by the gunboats 
on the Nile. 



XII 



AT KENUR 



The first thing I saw of the social life of Kenur was 
the Press censor shaving himself : he said that any- 
body might take any quarters that nobody else had 
taken. As he spoke my eye fell on a round tukl 
between the Sirdar's quarters, the Censor's, and the 
telegraph tent — plainly an ideal residence for corre- 
spondents. It appeared empty. True, it was not 
much bigger than a 'bus-driver's umbrella; but you 
could j[ust get three men and a table into it It 
would do very weU for to-day: to-morrow we ex- 
pected to fight As it turned out, we stayed at Kenur 
four days, during which the tukl contracted hourly, 
till in the end it seemed nearly half big enough for one 
person. Moreover, it turned out to be tenanted after 
all — by enormous bees, which had dug out the inside 
of the wooden framework till the whole place was one 
large hive. Honour and prudence alike seemed to call 
for an attack on them. But on reflection I pointed 
out that the truest courage lay in sitting quite still 



ABBIYAL OF THE SEAFOBTHS. 101 

when a large bee settled on the back of your neck, and 
that the truest precaution lay in smoking tobacco. 
So we sat down quite still and smoked tobacco for 
four days. 

Kenur was like all the villages in this part of the 
world, only if possible longer. All are built along 
the Nile, that the inhabitants may have as short a 
way as possible to go for water : Kenur was from two 
to three miles long, and the camp stretched the whole 
length of it. Between the camp and the river was 
nearly a mile of land once cultivated, now overgrown 
with Sodom apples. Nervous critics pointed out that 
dervishes might attack the long line of the zariba, 
and slip in between the force and its water. But 
most people knew that nothing of the sort would 
happen. The Sirdar is not the man to wait to be 
attacked, and the long, open camp was beautifully 
adapted for bringing out the whole army in fighting- 
line at a moment's notice. 

The first afternoon at Kenur was enlivened by the 
advent of the first four companies of the Seaforths. 
They came by steamer, smiling all over, from colonel 
to private, to find they were in time. Down by the 
river to meet them was an enormous band drawn from 
all the blacks, bristling with half-jocose, half-ferocious 
swagger as the darlings always are. The Seaforths 
formed up into column, deep-chested, upstanding, un- 
deniable, a delight to look upon ; the Sirdar fell in by 
the colonel, the band began to wail out "Hieland 



102 AT KENUE, 

Laddie" and "Annie Laurie," and anything else it 
thought would make them feel at home, and off they 
swung towards the southern horn of the zariba. All 
round it they marched, every regiment, white, black, 
and yellow, lining the route in its turn, following its 
colonel in " Hip, hip, hip, hurrah ! " Does not every 
native soldier know that the Highlanders have sworn 
to wear no trousers till they put them on in Khartum ? 
The second four companies came in next day, with 
an equal ear-splitting. Colonel Lewis's brigade at 
Fort Atbara was only five miles off, connected by 
telegraph, so that now we were complete. Meanwhile 
the days at Kenur were not" wasted — days seldom are 
with the Sirdar about. Every morning at half-past 
six or so the whole force paraded and manoeuvred. 
The first day's exercise was an attack in line, British 
on the right, Maxwell's in the centre, M'Donald's on 
the left. The two latter used the attack formation of 
the Egyptian army — four of each battalion's six com- 
panies tn line and two in support. The British had 
three battalions in line and the four companies of the 
Seaforths in support: on each flank were guns, and 
the extreme battalion in each case was in column of 
companies. This was the formation in which the 
Sirdar advanced on Dongola in '96, except that the 
place of the flanking columns was there taken on the 
right by the cavalry — who now were of course recon- 
noitring all day — and on the left by the Nile with 
the gunboats. 



A STATELY SPECTACLE. 103 

The next day the force mancEuvred in brigade 
squares in echelon, and the day after formed one 
square of the whole army, skeleton companies repre- 
senting the Third Brigade. It was in the first of these 
formations that we did all the subsequent marching 
up the Atbara — a stately spectacle. On the right, 
and leading, was the British brigade — an advancing 
wave of desert-coloured khaki, with a dash of dark 
for the kUts of the Highlanders. They marched in 
columns of fours, that being a handy and flexible for- 
mation, and easily kept in line : the officer has only 
to see that four men are keeping a proper front with 
the rest of the brigade instead of fifty ; and at the 
word all can wheel up into line in less than a minute. 
Next, leftward and clear in rear, so that an attack on 
its front or the British flank would meet a cross-fire, 
marched Maxwell's brigade. Leftward and in rear 
of that came Macdonald. The Egyptian forces, march- 
ing in line for the front and rear of the square, 
and in column for its flanks, and having darker uni- 
form, made a denser blotch on the desert than the 
British. But dark or light, when you looked along 
the force it was tremendous, going forward wave by 
wave irresistibly, devouring the desert. 

Thus, on the morning of Sunday, March 20, the 
force broke up from Kenur. The camp went wild, 
for the news said that Mahmud was actually on the 
Atbara at last. He had seized Hudi ford, it was said, 
■even miles from the junction of the rivers; and to 



104 AT EENT7B. 

Hudi we were to march straight across the desert. The 
Intelligence Department more than half disbelieved 
the native stories. The native has no words for dis- 
tance and number but " near " and " far," " few " and 
"many" ; "near" may be anything within twenty miles, 
while " many " ranges from a hundred to a hundred 
thousand. However we marched — eleven miles at 
two miles an hour, in a choking sand-storm that 
muffled the sun to a pale winter moon, till at three in 
the afternoon we struck the river at Hudi. Here we 
found three battalions of Lewis's brigade, the 15th 
being left to garrison Fort Atbara ; but devil • 
dervish. 



XIII 



ON THE ATBARA. 



Coming down to the Atbara after the desert was like 
entering the gates of heaven. To you in England, 
fields pulsing with green wheat and gardens aflame 
with tulips, it might have seemed faded. To us it 
was paradise. 

The north bank drops twenty feet plumb to the 
sky-blue river. A stone's -throw across, the other 
bank is splashed with grass that struggles against 
jaundice; but it is real grass, and almost greenish, 
and after the desert we are very grateful for it. Be- 
yond that shelves a bare white-brown beach, thirsty 
for flood -time; beyond that a wall of white -green 
new-fledged mimosa topped with turrets of palm. 
Over it all the intense blue canopy of midday, the 
fires of sunset, or the black roof of midnight pierced 
with innumerable stars, so white and clear that you 
almost hold up your hand to touch them — it was 
worth a couple of marches of sand - storm to come 
into such a land. 



106 ON THE ATBABA. 

Our side, too, was thick with mimosa and dom- 
pahn, and tufted with grass — great coarse bunches, 
mostly as thick as straw and as yellow; but a few 
blades maintained a bloodless green, and horses and 
camels went without their sleep to tear at them. The 
camels eat the mimosa too — elsewhere a bush that 
grows thorns and little yellow honey-breathing jQuff- 
balls, but on the fruitful Atbara a cedar-spreading 
tree, with young leaves like an acacia's. The camels 
rear up their affected heads, and ecstatically scrunch 
thorns that would run any other beast's tongue 
through ; their lips drop blood, but they never notice 
it. And the blacks eat the dom-nuts — things like 
petrified prize apricots, whose kernel makes vegetable 
ivory, and whose husks, they say, taste like ginger- 
bread; though, having no ore-crusher in my kit, I 
cannot speak to that. But lanky Sambo was never 
tired of shying at them as they clustered just above 
the dead leaves and just below the green, and Private 
Atkins lent a hand with enthusiasm. Then Sambo 
would grin all round his head and crack the flinty 
things between his shining teeth, and Thomas would 
stand staring at him, uncertain whether he was a 
long-lost brother-in-arms or something out of a circus. 

They might well chew mimosa, and halfa-grass, 
and dom-nuts, for even on the river we were in a 
desert. We marched and camped in an utterly empty 
land. Atbara banks are green, birds whistle and coo 
in the tree-tops, now and again a hare switchbacks 



AN EMFTT LAND. 107 

across the line of march ; but along all the river there 
was not one living man. Here on the Atbara there 
were but rare traces of population — a few stones, half 
buried, standing for salt-workings, or a round, half 
washed-out mud-bank for a wall. 

In the empty Nile villages their bones were long 
ago gnawed white by jackals and hyenas, their sons 
were speared and thrown into the river, their wives 
and daughters led away to the harems of Omdurman. 
It is good land for the Sudan in this corner of the 
two rivers, worth, in places, perhaps as much as a 
penny an acre; and the Khalifa has swept it quite 
clean, and left it quite soulless. 

And soulless it seemed to stay. "We slept one 
night at Hudi in a sand-floored quadrangle of zariba, 
and you could hear the men expecting battle through 
their sleep. Next day, still looking to see black heads 
and spears rise over every sky-line, we marched to 
Ras el Hudi, six miles farther. Both Hudis were 
fords over the Atbara, and where one ended the 
other began : as the river was already nearly all ford, 
and the whole place contained not a single hut, 
you could call anywhere anything you liked. That 
same day (March 21st) the cavalry found the enemy. 
Perhaps it would be more strictly correct to say that 
the enemy found them: they were halted and dis- 
mounted when the Dervish horse suddenly attacked 
the sentries. The troopers were in their saddles and 
out at the enemy smartly enough, and after a short 



108 ON THE ATBARA. 

scuffle the Dervishes sheered oflF into the bush. The 
cavalry lost seven troopers killed and eight wounded, 
of whom two died next day. These were the first 
fatalities of the campaign. 

Next day, the bulk of the force remaining in Eas 
Hudi camp, a stronger reconnaissance went out — all the 
cavalry, with Maxims and the 13th Sudanese in sup- 
port. Just as we were sitting down to breakfast we 
heard heavy firing up river. On the sound rang out 
bugles ; syces could be seen frantically slamming 
saddles on to horses, and tugging them over to the 
Sirdar's headquarters. Ten seconds later the whole 
force was getting under arms. I pushed a tinned 
sausage down my throat and a biscuit into my holster, 
looked that my water-bottle was both full and well- 
corked— of course it was neither — and blundered 
through tussocks and mimosa - thorns out of camp. 
Already the long columns of khaki were combining 
into biigade-squares ; in a matter of minutes the army 
was riveted together and rolling majestically over the 
swaying desert towards the firing. This time, by a 
variation on the usual order, Macdonald's brigade was 
on the right, its front level with Gatacre's, while Max- 
well was echeloned on the left, and Lewis in support : 
the reason for this was that half a mile of bush fringed 
the Atbara, and the blacks were expected to be handier 
in it than the British. So we marched and marched. 
The British officers . had had no breakfast, but they 
were used to that by now : officers and men — white, 



A FALSE ALARM. 109 

black, and brown^ — all tingled with the exultant anti- 
cipation of battle. At last, four miles or so out of 
camp, we halted before a mile -wide slope of stony 
gravel — a God-sent field of fire. On the brow we 
could see a picket of cavalry : presently a rider 
detached himself, and came bucketing towards the 
Sirdar's flag. The order was given to load, and the 
sigh of contentment could be heard above the clatter 
of locks. It had come at last! 

But it hadn't. We had noted it a,s ominous that no 
more firing had beckoned us as we advanced. The 
reconnaissance and the fight alike seemed to have 
faded in front of us like a mirage. The sun was 
getting hot overhead: to go on indefinitely without 
any kind of baggage was not to be thought of. " Eise 
up, men, and prepare to go home," came the reluctant 
order. The army rose up and faced about, and cursed 
its way into camp again. It turned out afterwards 
that the enemy's cavalry had appeared in force, and 
that ours led them back to the 13th. Collinson Bey 
formed square, and gave them a volley or two at half 
a mile or so. A few Dervishes came out of their 
saddles ; and that was all, for they fell back and re- 
appeared no more. 

After that came to-morrow and to-morrow and to- 
morrow. Some days there was a little shooting, other 
days there was not; and we in camp heard and saw 
nothing in either case. Every morning one or two 
native battalions with Maxims went out, support- 



no ON THE ATBABA. 

ing the cavalry. They went out about three, and 
frizzled through morning, midday, and afternoon at a 
genial spot called Khor Abadar, five or six miles out : 
a khor is a dry desert watercourse, but this one was no 
more — nor less — than about a mile of what looked like 
rather rough sea solidified into clay. Having frizzled 
duly there all day, they would swing in again at seven 
or so, striding into camp bolt upright and with a 
jaunty snap, as if they had been out a quarter of an 
hour for a constitutional. You could always tell when 
the reconnaissance was coming in by the rolls of dust 
that blotted out the camp. At the corner where they 
stepped inside the zariba, Blackfriars on a November 
night was midday to it. You caught at a black face 
and the top of a shouldered rifle floating past from one 
eye to the other ; you felt, rather than beheld, a loom- 
ing horse-head and lance-butt over your shoulder. 
You neither saw nor heard, but were aware of regi- 
ments g,nd squadrons as in the dream of a dog-sleep. 
And as lazy day sweated after lazy day, the whole 
camp and the whole army began to dim into the 
phantom of a dream. The vivacious, never-sleepy 
bugles became a singing in your ear, the ripple of sun 
on bayonets was spots before the eyes, the rumour of 
the crouching enemy was the echo of a half-remembered 
fairy tale very, very far away. 

For, to be quite truthful, during that long succes- 
sion of to-morrows at Eas el Hudi, nobody quite knew 
where the Dervishes were. It was quite certain they 



WAITING THE KNKMT. Ill 

were somewhere near, for their cavalry was seen 
almost daily ; and they must be camped on the 
Atbara, for there was nowhere else whence they 
could get water. We were quite confident that they 
were there, and that the fight was coming, and we 
invented all sorts of stories to explain their delay in 
coming on. They started down the Nile fast ; they have 
slackened now — so we assured ourselves — to wait for 
their rear-guard, or to reconnoitre, or to knock down 
dom-nuts, or for any of a thousand reasons, and we 
were here a day sooner than was necessary. A day 
too soon, of course, was nothing — or rather it would 
be nothing after we had fought ; at present an extra 
day certainly meant a little longer discomfort. Tou 
must remember that the army was nearly 1400 miles 
from the sea, and about 1200 from any place that the 
things armies want could possibly come from. It had 
to be supplied along a sand -banked river, a single 
line of rail, which was carrying the material for its 
own construction as well, and various camel-tracks. 
That 13,000 men could ever have been brought into 
this hungry limbo at all shows that the Sirdar is the 
only English general who has known how to campaign 
in this country. The real enemy, he has seen, is not 
the Dervishes, whom we have always beaten, but the 
Sudan itself. 

He was conquering it; but for the moment the 
Sudan had an opening, and began trying us rather 
high. Not me personally, who had three camelii 



112 ON THE ATBABA. 

and two blankets and much tinned meat. To 
me and my likes the Sirdar's refusal of transport — 
most natural and proper, after all — had been a bless- 
ing ; it had made correspondents self-supporting, and 
therewith rich. But for the moment the want of 
transport and Mahmud's delay in coming on was hard 
on the troops — especially hard on the British brigade, 
and hardest of all on their officers. Officers and men 
came alike with one blanket and no overcoat. Now 
you must know that, though the Sudan can be live 
coals by day, it can be aching ice by night. It is the 
healthiest climate in the world if you have shade at 
noon and many rugs an hour before reveille ; but if 
you have not, and especially if you happen to be a 
kilted Highlander, it interferes with sleep. 

You must further remember that we left Kenur 
with the intention of fighting next day or the 
next. The British took the expectation seriously; 
the Egyptian officers did not. "You see," said one, 
" I've been in this bally country five years ; so when 
I was told to bring two days' kit, I brought a fort- 
night's." He was now sending his private camel back 
to Fort Atbara for more; the officers of the British 
brigade had no private camels. The officers had 
brought only what could go into a haversack, which 
includes, roughly, soap and a sponge, and a tooth- 
brush and a towel, but not a clean shirt, nor a 
handkerchief, nor shaving-tackle; so that the gilded 
popinjays were a little tarnished just at present. One 



HOW BEITISH OFFICERS FAEED. 113 

of them said, most truly, that an English tramp in 
summer, with a sweet haystack to sleep under, and 
sixpence a-day for bread and cheese and beer at way- 
side inns, was out of reckoning better off than a 
British officer on the banks of the Atbara. He slept 
on a pillow of dusty sand, which worked steadily into 
his hair; he got up in the middle of the night to 
patrol; then he lay down again and shivered. The 
men could sleep three together under a triple layer of 
blanket ; the officers must sleep each in his position 
on the flank or in the centre of his company. When 
he got up in the morning he had nothing to shave 
with, and lucky if he got a wash. The one camel- 
load of mess stores was wellnigh eaten up by now; 
he received the same ration as the men. His one 
shirt was no longer clean ; he hardly dared pull out 
his one handkerchief ; he went barefoot inside his boots 
while his socks were being washed. And always — 
night or day, on fatigue or at leisure, relatively clean 
or unredeemedly dirty, when he had borrowed a shave 
and felt almost like a gentleman again, or when he 
lay with his head in the dust and the black private 
doubted whether he should salute or not — his first 
paternal thought was the wellbeing of his men. 

When we found Mahmud he should pay for it. 
But in the meantime where was he? There was a 
perpetual series of cavalry reconnaissances, and a 
perpetual stream of scallywags coming in from his 
camp. Any dfty from dawn to dark you might see 



114 ON THE ATBASA. 

half -clothed Mack men squatting before Colonel 
Wingate. Some were fairly fat; some were bags of 
bones. But all stated with one consent that they 
were hungry, and having received refreshment felt 
that they could do no less than tell Colonel Wingate 
such tidings as they conceived he would like to hear. 
There was no such thing as a place on the Atbara, 
as I have explained : there were names on the map, 
but as they named nothing in particular you oould 
put them anywhere you liked within ten miles or 
so. Also, there is no such thing as distance in the 
native mind, so that the native also could locate any- 
thing anywhere that seemed convenient, 

On the 27th Bimbashi Haig reconnoitred the op- 
posite bank of the Atbara up to Manawi — say eighteen 
miles — and saw no trace of the enemy. Combining 
that fact with the precipitate from the scallywags' 
stories, we came to the conclusion that Mahmud and 
Osman»were on the southern bank, somewhere near 
the spot marked on the map as Hilgi. It was believed 
that on the first news of the first cavalry contact they 
entrenched themselves there in a four-mile belt of 
scrub. Now General Hunter had made a reconnais- 
sance up the Atbara last winter as far as Adarama — 
indispensably informative it turned out — and the Staff 
know what sort of scrub it is. It is an impenetrable, 
flesh-tearing jungle of mimosa-spears and dom-palm 
and stumbly halfa-grass and hanging ropes of creeper : 
no army in the world could possibly attack through it 



A BOLD STBATAGSM. 116 

That being so, the Sirdar's course appeared to be 
to wait at Eas el Hudi until Mahmud came out. 
Hunger might bring him out — only as yet it had not. 
The more trustworthy of the deserters said that there 
was still a certain store of food. You must know 
that the Dervishes have honeycombed the Sudan with 
caches of buried grain: many have been found and 
opened by the Egyptian army, but it is possible 
that some remain to draw on. Moreover, men who 
were at Toski told how, in the starving army of 
Wad-el-Nejumi, the fighting men were well fed 
enough: it was the women and the children and 
the followers whose ribs broke through the skin. 
The scallywags were starved, of course: that is why 
they came in, and being starved themselves they saw 
the whole army in like case. But it seemed by the 
best information that what with food they brought, 
and stores they found, and dom-nuts they knocked off 
the trees, the dervishes had a few days of fairly filled 
stomach before them yet. 

Then how to fetch them out ? The situation called 
for a bold stroke, and the Sirdar answered it, after his 
wont, with a bold and safe one. On the morning of 
March 24 the 15 th Egyptians left Fort Atbara in the 
three gunboats for Shendi. Left at Shendi were all 
the women of Mahmud's force, and with his women 
gone the Sudani is only half a man. It might draw 
him and it might not ; it was worth trying. 



XIV 



THE RAID ON SHENDI 



I HAD stepped out in the morning to pick fruit from 
the sanduk for breakfast. Below me, in the shallow 
river, a damson-skinned black was bathing and wash- 
ing his white Friday clothes and whistling " The 
British Grenadiers." The sun was just up; but in 
the Sudan he begins to blister things the moment he 
is over the horizon. The sanduk lay on the south side 
of the north wall of our zariba. Greengages were 
glittering in the young sunshine ; but to pull up mis- 
apprehension, I may as well say at once that sanduk 
is the Arabic for provision-case, and that our green- 
gages glittered through glass bottles. It may be that 
you were never much attracted by bottled fruits. But 
they taste of fruit a good deal more than tinned ones ; 
and when your midday is six hours of solid 110 iii 
the shade, you will find bottled fruits one of the 
things least impossible to eat that you are likely to 
get. 

Therewith entered the Mess-President's head camel- 



A NEW USE FOR ELLIMAN. 117 

man. He was a Jaali by tribe; his name meant 
"Powerful in the Faith"; and in this wilderness I 
liked to think that if he were not black, and had no 
moustache, and no razor-cut tribal marks on his cheeks, 
his tilted nose and smiling teeth, and erect, sprightly 
carriage would make him a rather pretty -ugly French 
girl. He approached his lord's bed before the tent 
door and pattered Arabic faster than I can keep up 
with. But the sum of his tale was this : that the raid 
on Shendi had been a great success, many Dervishes 
were slain, and many taken, with many women 
and children; that his fellow- Jaalin had done best 
part of the execution, and that the 15th Battalion was 
already back again at Fort Atbara. 

Then let us go to Fort Atbara, said we, and hear all 
about it. We are going mouldy for want of exercise 
— and, to be quite open with you, the liquor famine 
here is getting grave. Last night the boy came up 
with a couple of bottles : " Only two wine more," said 
he, and mournfully displayed one Scrubbs's Cloudy 
Ammonia — try it in your bath, but not in your 
drinking-cup — and one EUiman's Embrocation. So 
saddle up ; it is 1000 to 5 against a fight here to-day, 
and it is better to sweat a-horseback in the desert 
oven-blast than fry in sand and camp-smells here. 

So the Mess-President and I picked our way over 
the spongy ground outside camp where the water lies 
in flood time, and then swung out, quarter of an hour 
canter and ten minutes walk, over the hard sand and 



118 THE fiAIP ON SHENDL 

gravel of the desert. The way from Fort Atbara was 
trodden already into a road as broad as Berber High 
Street, and almost as populous — now a whiteunder- 
clothed Jaali scallywag with a Eemington and a 
donkey, now a lolloping convoy of camels, now a 
couple of Greeks with stores. For the Jew, as we 
know him, is a child for commercial enterprise along- 
side the Sudan Greek. A Greek had his ovens going 
on Ferkee field before the last shot was fired; the 
moment the Suakim road was opened the Greek's 
camels were on it. The few English merchants here 
were hard and enterprising, and they had good stuff — 
only just when you wanted it, it was usually just a 
day's journey away. The Greek gets his stuff up every- 
where: it is often inferior stuff, and he caravans it 
with a double-barrelled rifle on his shoulder and 
visions of Dervishes behind every mimosa bush ; but 
he gets it up. He charges high for it, but he deserves 
every piastre he gets. 

At Fort Atbara there stood already a small bazaar 
of tukls, and a pink shirt -sleeved, black -stubble- 
chinned Greek in each among his wares. There we 
laid in every known liquor except claret and beer ; 
there we even got six dozen Pilsener-bottles of soda- 
water — of such are the privations of the Sudan. 
Most of the Greeks seemed to confine their energies 
to sardines, many degrees over proof. But one had 
planted a little salad-garden ; another knew where he 
could get tomatoes; a third specialised in scented 



THE SUDAN GREEK. 119 

soap and stationery. Eemember, we were twelve 
hundred miles from the nearest place where people 
buy such things in shops ; remember, too, that not 
an inch of Government truck or steamer could be 
spared for private dealers ; and then you will realise 
what a Nansen of retail trade is the Sudan Greek 

But a correspondent cannot live by soda-water and 
tabasco sauce alone: let us try to acquire some in- 
formation. In the commanderia — that stable house 
of mud, six-roomed and lofty roofed, the stateliest 
mansion of the Sudan — sits Hickman Bey, who swept 
out Shendi. In the English army it would be almost 
a scandal that an officer of his service, should go any- 
where or do anything. The Egyptian army is an 
army of young men, with the red-hot dash of a boy 
tempered by responsibility into the fine steel of a 
man at his best for both plan and deed. 

But about the raid. To listen to any one of the 
men who conducted it you would think that he had 
been a passenger, and that all the others had done all 
the work: that is their way. The three gunboats 
with their naval officers — now you observe the full 
significance of the fact that the British Navy's com- 
mand of the sea runs up to the Sixth Cataract — with 
the 15th Battalion, guns, and 150 friendly Jaalin, 
left Fort Atbara on March 24. They were to have 
surprised Shendi in the morning of the 26th; but 
luck was bad, though it turned out not to matter 
much. One of the boats went aground, as boats will 



120 THE KAID ON SHENDI. 

on a daily falling Nile. It took some hours to get 
her off, and then, as it was too late for Saturday 
morning, and an afternoon attack would leave no 
light for pursuit, it was decided to make it Sunday. 
So the boats went slow, stopping here and there to 
wood up on the depeopled banks ; but at one place it 
fell out that the landing-party came on three Dervishes. 
One of them got away with his skin and the alarm. 
When he came to Shendi the garrison — 700 men with 
many women and children — were tom-tomming a 
fantasia on account of an alleged victory whereof 
Mahmud had advertised them. The fantasia broke 
up hurriedly, and all the best quality women were 
sent away on camels to Omdurman. That meant, of 
course, the Baggara Arab women. The women of 
the black riflemen and spearmen were left to shift. 
At ten on Sunday morning Colonel Hickman and 
his raiders duly appeared and landed. They found 
the en^my drawn up between the bank and rising 
ground ; there were four forts — one sunken, three cir- 
cular earth walls — but Mahmud took away the guns 
with him. The Fifteenth formed column of fours and 
marched placidly in front of the enemy, taking not the 
least notice of their fire — which indeed hurt nobody — 
till it outflanked their left. The two forces were then 
more or less like a couple of L's lying on their backs, 
one inside the other. The dervish L was the inside 
one — the stem of it fighting men and the foot scallyi> 



THE JAALDTS chance. 121 

wags carrying bundles; the Egyptian L's stem was 
the Fifteenth, and its foot, stretching inland towards 
the loot, the Jaalin. 

Bimbashi Peake, of the Artillery, let ofif two rounds 
of shrapnel over the scallywags, and the fight was 
over. Instantly the plain was quite black with the 
baggage the dervishes dropped — bundles of clothes, 
angarebs, chairs, big war-drums, helmets, spears, gib- 
bas, bags of dhurra, donkeys, horses, women, children. 
Every dervish was making for Omdurman as hard as 
his legs would let him. 

Now came the Jaalin's chance. The Jaalin used to 
be a flourishing tribe, and inhabited the island of 
Meroe — the country between the Atbara and the Blue 
Nile. A few years ago the tribe had a difference of 
opinion with the Khalifa : there are not many Jaalin 
now, and what there are inhabit where they can. 
The survivors are anxious to redress the balance by 
removing a corresponding proportion of Baggara, and 
they began. After a time they came to Hickman 
Bey, panting, but only half happy. " It is very good, 
thou Excellency," they cried ; " we're killing them 
splendidly. They're all out in the desert, only we 
can't get at them to kill them enough. Can't we have 
some of the donkeys to pursue on ? " " Take the lot," 
aaid his Excellency. 

So the island of Meroe beheld the novel sight of 
Baggara cavalry, on brood mares with foals at foot, 



122 THE ILAID ON SHSNDL 

fleeing for their lives before Jaalin on donkeys. Most 
of the five-and-twenty horsemen got away to tell the 
news to the Khalifa ; by this time probably their 
right hands and right feet were off. The footmen the 
Jaalin pursued till ten at night, and slew to the tune 
of 160 ; also there were 645 prisoners, mostly women. 
They got a tremendous reception from the women at 
Fort Atbara when they reached it, and joined in it 
themselves quite unaffectedly. By now they are pro- 
bably the wives of such black soldiers as are allowed 
to marry ; as like as not many of them actually had 
husbands, brothers, sons, fathers in one Sudanese bat- 
talion or another. A Sudan lady's married life is full 
of incident in these days ; it might move the envy of 
Fargo, North Dakota. But when all is said and done, 
a black soldier with a life engagement at 15s. a-month 
minimum, with rations and allowances, is a more 
brilliant catch than any Baggara that ever came out 
of Daifur. 

It was a raid that for neatness and thoroughness 
might teach a lesson to Osman Digna himself. "What 
Osman and Malimud said when they heard their men's 
women were gone, and that their own retreat along 
the Nile could be harried for a hundred miles as far 
as Shabluka, I do not pretend to know. I should be 
sorry to meet any of the ends they must have invoked 
upon all the Sirdar's relatives. 

And when we got back, and the camels seesawed 



THE cook's GEIEVANCE. 123 

in with the sanduks, the cook, for all his new wealth, 
was very angry. " You have brought no curry- 
powder, thou Effendim," he said. " You didn't say 
you wanted any curry-powder," the Mess-President de- 
fended himself. " Yes I did," said the cook, stemlj ; 
" I said we were short of cdl vegetables." 



XV 



BEST AND RECONNAISSANCES 

The force remained in camp at Eas el Hudi till April 
3. Mahmud's exact position was still undetermined, 
his intentions yet more so. It was a queer state of 
things — two armies within twenty miles of each other, 
both presumably wishful to fight, both liable to run 
short of provisions, yet neither attacking and neither 
quite sure where the other was. But the Sirdar had 
always the winning hand. While he sat on the At- 
bara Mahmud was stale-mated. It may be supposed 
that he came down the Nile to fight : very well, here 
was the Sirdar ready to fight and beat him. Osman 
Digna probably had raiding in his head. But he could 
not raid Berber while the Sirdar was below him on 
the Atbara : that would have meant seventy miles 
across the desert, with wells choked up — though he 
may not have known this — and the Sirdar always 
liable to attack him on flank or to get to Berber before 
him. One day we had a report that he had started on 
a journey the other way, towards Adarama ; but, if he 



MAHMUD STALE-MATED. 126 

ever went at all, it was probably to dig up grain: 
there was nothing worth raiding about Adarama. 
Finally, now that Shendi was destroyed, to go back 
meant ruin ; the blacks, irritated by the loss of their 
women, would desert ; the gunboats would harry the 
retreat as far as Shabluka ; it was even possible that 
the whole Anglo-Egyptian force would get to the Nile 
before they did. And if he stayed where he was, then 
in the end he must either fight or starve. 

Mahmud was stale-mated, no doubt, whatever course 
he took ; only in the meantime he took none. He did 
not move, he did not fight, and he did not starve. 
And we were still not quite sure where he was. The 
army stayed a fortnight in Eas Hudi camp, recon- 
noitring daily, with an enemy within twenty miles, 
whose precise position it did not know. It hardly 
seems to speak well for the cavalry. Yet it would be 
most unjust to blame them: the truth is that the 
Egyptian cavalry was hopelessly outnumbered and 
outmatched. Broadwood Bey had eight squadrons — 
say 800 lances — with eight Maxims and one horse 
battery. There were also two companies of camel- 
corps, but these were generally wanted for convoys. 
Against this Mahmud, as he said afterwards himself, 
had 4000 Baggara horse. 

Furthermore, it cannot be said that the Egyptian 
cavalry were above criticism. They were enormously 
improved, as will shortly be seen : ever since the Don- 
gola campaign they had come on greatly, but it is 



126 BEST AND BEOONNAISSANGES. 

doubtful whether they will ever have the dash of the 
best European or Indian cavalry. They have great 
merits: in an empty land they will live on almost 
nothing, and no stretch of work can subdue their iron 
bodies to fatigue. They are no longer open to sus- 
picion on the score of courage. But in reconnaissance 
work they wafit smartness and intelligence. It could 
not be imputed to them as a fault that they did not 
ride through five times their force and see what was 
behind. But it was a fact that the Baggara worked 
better in the bush than they did. Day after day they 
would ride out and see nobody or only a vedette or 
two; as soon as they began to retire they were fol- 
lowed by dervishes, who had apparently been seeing 
them all the time. An officer told me that one day, 
walking out from Fort Atbara, he saw a returning 
patrol under a native lieutenant. He stood still under 
a tree to see if they would see him : they passed him 
by likejnen asleep. In a word, the Egyptian trooper 
is what it is inevitable he should be. You cannot 
breed a light quick-witted scout out of a hundred 
centuries of drudgery and serfdom. He will improve 
with time ; meanwhile he is still a fellah 

Considering the quantity and quality of their 
material, it was wonderful that Broadwood Bey 
and his British officers did as much as they did. 
To work the weakest arm of a force cannot be in- 
spiriting work, but they stuck to it with unquench- 
able courage and inexhaustible patience. If it be 



OKNESAL HUNTES FINDS THE ENEMT. 127 

asked why the cavalry was not strengthened with 
British or Indian regiments, the answer is very easy. 
It was almost a miracle that so large a force had been 
got up to the Atbara and fed there ; to bring up more 
horses into a country almost naked of fodder was a 
physical impossibility, too impossible even for Sir 
Herbert Kitchener. 

But if the cavalry was for a while unsuccessful in 
localising Mahmud's entrenchment, it was wholly suc- 
cessful in keeping his scouts from coming near us, and 
that was no small achievement. The Baggara might 
have made things very unpleasant for us even at Has 
el Hudi. But for the patrols of the unwearying 
cavalry they could easily have crept up in the bush 
across the river and fired into camp all night every 
night. They might have got below the camp and cut 
up convoy after convoy till hunger drove (he Sirdar 
down to Fort Atbara again and opened the way to 
Berber. We sat day after day and wondered why 
they never did it; but they never did. 

At last, on March 30, General Hunter went out. 
With him went the cavalry, the horse-battery, and 
four Maxims, while two battalions of infantry and 
a field battery were advanced in support to Khor 
Abadar. When he got back that evening everybody 
knew that Mahmud's stronghold was found. He had 
gone on until he came to it. He had ridden up to 
within 300 yards of it and looked in. What he saw, 
of course, the Intelligence Department knew better 



128 REST AND SEGONNAISSANCES. 

than I did, but some things were common property. 
The position faced the open desert — we all breathed 
freely at this — and went right back through the scrub 
to the river. Eound it ran a tremendous zariba three 
miles long, and in the centre, on an eminence, were 
trenches affording three tiers of fire. This proved to 
be an exaggeration as regarded size, and a misunder- 
standing otherwise : the triple trench ran nearly round 
the position. What was certain and to the point was 
that the place was trimmed with black heads, but 
that their owners seemed reluctant to come out. The 
horse-battery gave them a score of rounds or so, but 
they made no answer, and in their thick bush any 
casualties they may have had were safely concealed. 

However, here at last was Mahmud marked down. 
To be precise, he was at Nakheila, eighteen miles away, 
as the cavalry and Staff said, though, when the in- 
fantry came to foot it, they made it well over twenty : 
every infantry man knows how cavalry and Staff will 
underrate distances. Wherever he was, we knew the 
way to him, and we could take our time. Now what 
would the Sirdar do ? 

For the next two days the camp buzzed with 
strategy and tactics. It was no longer what Mahmud 
would do : Mahmud, as we have seen, could do noth- 
ing. But would the Sirdar wait for him to starve into 
attack or dispersal, or would he go for Nakheila ? 
Many people thought that, being a careful man, he 
would wait and not risk the Iqss an attack would 



REASONS FOR THE ATTACK. 129 

cost ; but they were wrong. On the evenipg of April 
1 it became known that we were movincr on the 
morning of the 3rd four miles forward to Abadar. 
Some theorists still held out that the change of camp 
was a mere matter of health ; and indeed sanitation 
had long cried for it. Others held that the Sirdar was 
not the man to lengthen his line of communication 
for nothing: the move meant attack. 

What considerations resolved the Sirdar to storm 
Mahmud's zariba, I do not pretend to know. But 
many arguments for his decision suggested themselves 
at once. It was true that the Dervishes could not 
stay at Nakheila for ever, but as yet there was no sign 
of starvation from them. On the other hand, it was no 
joke to supply 12,000 men even seventeen miles from 
Fort Atbara by camel-transport alone: as time wore 
on and camels wore out, it became less and less easy. 
Secondly, the white brigade was beginning to feel the 
heat, the inadequate shelter, and the poor food : up to 
now its state of health had been wonderful — only 
two per cent of sick or thereabouts — but now began to 
appear dysentery and enteric. Finally, it was hardly 
fitting that so large a British force should sit down 
within twenty miles of an enemy and not smash him. 
There was a good deal of lurking sympathy with 
Mahdism in some Egyptian quarters far enough away 
not to know what Mahdism was: to shrink from a 
decisive attack would nourish it. The effect on the 
troops themselves would be disheartening, and dis- 



130 REST AND EECONNAISSANCES. 

heartenment spells lassitude and sickness. And to 
the Dervishes themselves a battle would be a far 
more killing blow than a dispersal and retreat. In 
all dealings with a savage enemy, I suppose the 
rule holds that it is better and cheaper in the end 
to attack, and attack, and attack again. All con- 
siderations of military reputation pleaded unanimously 
that Mahmud must be destroyed in battle; and at 
last the army was on the direct road to destroy 



XVI 

CAMEL-CORPS AND CAVALRY 

"Camel- CORPS luck," said the Bimbashi, and smiled 
bitterly, then swore. " my God, if this is the big 
show!" 

Climbing up over sand -bags on to one of the 
gun -platforms of Fort Atbara, we crouched in the 
embrasure and listened. Boom — boom — boom; very 
faint, but very distinct, and at half-minute intervals. 
We had ridden in the day before from the Sirdar's 
camp up the Atbara to buy more bottled fruit and, 
alas ! more gin from the Greek shanties on the Nile 
beach. A convoy, on a similar errand, had been 
attacked by Dervishes half an hour after we had 
passed it, yet we heard not a shot. To-day, all this 
way off, we heard plainly : it must be an action indeed. 
Our own army, we knew, was not to move. Could it 
be that Mahmud had come down and was attacking 
us at Abadar ? And we eighteen miles away at Fort 
Atbara, and down there in the sand-drift roadway the 
wobbling, grousing camels, that were to be conveyed 



132 CAMBL-COBPS AND CAYALRY. 

out at two miles an hour ! We joined the Bimbashi, 
and cursed miserably on the chance of it. 

But no, we struggled to persuade ourselves, it 
couldn't be so bad as that. It must be a battalion 
come out to clear the road for our convoy. Or it 
must be the reconnaissance that was going up to the 
dervish zariba at Nakheila. Correspondents are not 
allowed to go with reconnaissances, so that if it is 
only that, there's no great loss after all. Anyhow it 
is eleven o'clock now. The baggage camels have 
lolloped out under the mud guard-house, through the 
fort -gate, through the gap in the mimosa -thorn 
zariba. The camel-corps escort is closing up in rear : 
we are off. 

Half a mile ahead ride five blacks, their camels 
keeping perfect line. The sun flashes angrily on their 
rifle-barrels, but they look him steadily in the face, 
peering with puckered eyes over the desert below 
them: in this land of dust and low scrub a camel's 
hump is almost a war balloon. Far out on their right 
I see a warily advancing dot, which is four more ; a 
black dot on the rising leftward skyline, three more ; 
out on the right flank of the baggage camels, shaving 
the riverside thickets, gleam white spider legs, which 
are a couple of camel-troopers more. They stop and 
examine a track; they break into a trot and disappear 
behind a palm clump ; they reappear walking. But 
the main force of the two companies rides close about 
the swinging quadrangle of baggage camels — in front, 



CAMBL-CORPS LUCK. 133 

on flank, in rear. Slowly and sleepily the mass of 
beasts strolls on into the desert, careless what horsemen 
might be wheeling into line behind the ridge, or what 
riflemen might be ambushed in the scrub. But the 
scouts in front are looking at every footprint, over 
every skyline, behind every clump of camel-thorn. 

To be out of an exciting action is camel-corps luck ; 
this is camel-corps work. The Bimbashi missed his 
part in" the reconnaissance to ride all night and guard 
the menaced convoy ; he slept one hour at dawn, and 
now returns in the sun. He is quite fresh and active. 
This is his usual work ; but he is not happy because 
this also is his usual luck. Only the Egyptian army 
would have found it very difficult to do without him 
and his desert cavalry in the past, and even now, with 
all the desert roads except the Bayuda behind it, 
finds plenty of work for the camel-corps still. And 
one day they say, " Take out twenty camels," and 
the next day, "Take out the rest." The next day, 
"Those twenty that weren't out yesterday can't 
possibly be tired" — but the Bimbashi goes out every 
day. The skin is scaled off his nose with sun, and 
his eyes are bloodshot with sand, and the hairs of his 
moustache have snapped off short with drought, and 
his hair is bleaching to white. All that is the hall- 
mark of the Sudan. 

Getting into the saddle had been like sitting down 
suddenly in a too hot bath ; by this time you could 
not bear your hand upon it. Out in the desert 



134 OAMKL-CORPS A3ID CAVALRY. 

gleamed the steel-blue water and black reflected trees 
of the mirage; even in mirage there is no green in 
the midday sun of the Sudan. What should be green 
is black; all else is sun-coloured. It is torment to 
face the gaudy glare that stabs your eyes. If you 
lift them to the sky it is not very blue — I have seen 
far deeper in England; but it is alive all over with 
quivering passionate heat. Beating from above and 
burning from below, the sun strikes at you heavily. 
There is no way out of it except through the hours 
into evening. No sound but boot clinking on camel- 
stirrup : you hear it through a haze. You ride along 
at a walk, half dead. You neither feel nor think, you 
hardly even know that it is hot. You just have 
consciousness of a heavy load hardly to be borne, 
pressing, pressing down on you, crushing you under 
the dead weight of sun. 

We met the usual people — a Greek with four 
cameK a bare - legged boy on a donkey, a bare- 
breasted woman under a bundle — the second and 
third-class passengers of the desert. We questioned 
them with alternate triumph and despair, as they 
answered alternately after their kind. One said it 
was two squadrons, a battery, and a battalion fighting 
in our old camp at Eas Hudi ; another said Mahmud 
had come down to Abadar and had fought the Sirdar 
for four hours ; another said Mahmud had gone right 
away, and that the whole Anglo-Egyptian army had 
gone after him. Every story was wholly false, be- 



THE SCENE OF A DEEVISH RAID. 135 

gotten only of a wish to please ; whence you perceive 
the advantages enjoyed by him who would collect 
intelligence in the Sudan. 

Slowly the minutes crawled on ; the camels crawled 
slower. On days like this you feel yourself growing 
older : it seemed months since we heard the guns 
from the parapet; it would have hardly seemec 
wonderful if we had heard that the campaign had 
been finished while we were away. "We had ridden 
awhile with the Bimbashi, but conversation wilted in 
the sun ; now we had ambled ahead till even the 
advanced guard had dropped out of sight behind. 
One servant with us rode a tall fast camel ; from that 
watch-tower he suddenly discerned cases lying open 
on the sand about a hundred yards off the trampled 
road. Anything for an incident: we rode listlessly 
up and looked. A couple of broken packing-cases, 
two tins of sardines, a tin of biscuits, half empty, a 
small case of empty soda-bottles with " Sirdar " sten- 
cilled on it, and a couple of empty bottles of whisky. 
Among them lay a cigarette-box with a needle and a 
reel of cotton, a few buttons, and a badge — A.S.C. — 
such as the Army Service Corps wear on their 
shoulder-straps. 

We were on the scene of last evening's raid. Two 
camels, we remembered, had been cut off and the loads 
lost. We found the marks on the sand where the con- 
voy-camels had knelt down in living zariba to wait 
for relief from Abadar, seven miles away. All the 



136 CAMEL-CORPS AITO CAVALRY. 

time it took to fetch the camel-corps the Dervishes 
must have lurked in the bush eating biscuits and 
drinking the whisky of the infidel. The Sirdar's 
soda-water was plainly returned empties, so that they 
would have found the whisky strong; the sardines, 
not knowing the nature of tinned meats, they had 
thrown away. We waited to report to the BimbashL 

Presently the convoy crept up, a confusion of vague 
necks and serpent heads, waving like tentacles. The 
Bimbashi had given his horse to an orderly, and was 
sleeping peacefully on his camel. Now we had found 
among the scattered camel-loads a wineglass, broken 
in the stem, but providentially intact in the bowl. 
Also we had bought for a great price at Fort Atbara 
four eggs, and had whisky wherein to break them. 
So the Bimbashi slipped off his camel all in one piece, 
and we lunched. 

By now the damned sun was taking his hand off 
us. We were slipping through his fingers; he was 
low down behind us, and his rays sprawled into 
larger and longer shadows. Then he went down in 
a last sullen fusion of gold. The camels, feeling them- 
selves checked, flopped down where they stood; the 
drivers flopped down beside them, and bobbed their 
heads in the approximate direction of Mecca. They 
might well give thanks ; with sunset the world had 
come to life again. A slight air sprang up, and a 
gallop fanned it to a grateful breeze. Soon the 
eastern sky became a pillar of dust; the horses in 



A CAVALEY FIGHT. 137 

camp were being led to water. The great fight was 
still timed for the day after to-morrow, and another 
twelve hours of sunlessness were before us. 

The camp was just as we had left it, all but for 
one piece of news : the cavalry had had a fight, and 
had fought well against every arm of the enemy. It 
was their guns, not our own, we had heard nearly forty 
miles away at Fort Atbara. General Hunter was in 
command of the reconnaissance, and when General 
Hunter goes out to look at the enemy you may be 
sure he will look at him if he has to jump over his 
zariba to do it. Leaving the supporting battalion of 
infantry behind, the eight squadrons of cavalry with 
eight Maxims rode to the front of Mahmud's entrench- 
ment. Last time he had made no sign of life. This 
time the first appearance brought out 700 cavalry. 
These were pushed back, but next came infantry, 
swarming like ants out of the zariba till the desert 
was black with them. They were estimated at some 
1500 ; they opened fire, not effectively. Then came 
a bang to the rearward : he was firing his guns. And 
on each flank, meanwhile, emerged from the bush be- 
side the entrenchment his encircling cavalry to cut 
ours off. 

" It was Maiwand over again, only properly done," 
said one of the men who saw it. The Maxims opened 
fire on both cavalry and infantry, knocking many over, 
though the Dervishes were always in open order. And 
when it was time to go the Baggara horsemen were 



138 CAMEL-CORPS AJSTO CAVALET. 

by this time across our true line of retirement. Broad- 
jwood Bey ordered his troopers to charge. Behind his 
English leaders — the Bey himself, who always leads 
every attack, and Bimbashis le Gallais and Persse — 
the despised unwarlike fellah charged and charged 
home, and the Baggara lord of the Sudan split before 
him. Bimbashi Persse was wounded in the left fore- 
arm by a bullet fired from horseback ; six troopers 
were killed and ten wounded. The loss of the Der- 
vishes by lance, and especially by Maxim bullet, 
was reckoned at near 200. 

Our seventeen casualties were a light price to pay 
for such a brilliant little fight, to say nothing of the 
information gained, and above all, the vindication of 
the Egyptian trooper. That the fellah was fearless of 
bullet and shell all knew ; now he had shown his in- 
difference to cold steel also. The cavalry mess was a 
hum of cheerfulness that night, and well it might be. 
The officers were all talking at once for joy : the 
troopers riding their horses down to the pool moved 
with a swing that was not there before. For the 
dogged, up-hill, back-breaking, heart-breaking work 
of fifteen years had come to bear fruit. 

And cheerfulness spread to the whole army also: 
next morning — the 5th — we were off again, this time 
to Umdabieh, seven miles across the desert. The bush 
at Abadar was almost jungle — full of green sappy 
plants and creepers, a refreshment to camels, but a 
prospective hotbed of fever for men. Everybody was 



UMDABIEH. 139 

getting very sick of the Atbara, which had been such 
a paradise of green when we first camped on it. We 
missed the ever-blowing breeze of the Nile : the night 
was a breathless oven and the day a sweaty stewpan. 
The Atbara seemed even getting sick of itself : day by 
day it dropped till now it was no river at all, but a 
string of shallow befouled pools. All longed for the 
fatherly Nile again. 

So once more the squares marched forth before day- 
light, and black dusk lowered under the rising sun. 
Umdabieh was a novelty for an Atbara camp, in that a 
few mud huts marked the place whence the Dervishes 
had blotted out a village. The river was punier than 
ever and the belt of bush thin ; lucky was the man 
whose quarters included a six-foot dom-palm to lay his 
head under. I spent both afternoons at Umdabieh 
chasing a patch of shadow round and round a tree. 
"We did nothing on the 6th, for on the evening of the 
7th we were to march, and to fight on Good Friday. 



XVII 

THE BATTIiE OP THE ATBARA 

As the first rays of sunrise glinted on the desert 
pebbles, the army rose up and saw that it was in 
front of the enemy. All night it had moved blindly, 
in faith. At six in the evening the four brigades 
were black squares on the rising desert outside the 
bushes of Umdabieh camp, and they set out to march. 
Hard gravel underfoot, full moon overhead, about them 
a coy horizon that seemed immeasurable yet revealed 
nothing, the squares tramped steadily for an hour. 
Then all lay down, so that the other brigades were 
swallowed up into the desert, and the faces of the 
British square were no more than shadows in the 
white moonbeams. The square was unlocked, and 
first the horses were taken down to water, then the 
men by half- battalions. We who had water ate some 
bully-beef and biscuit, put our heads on saddle-bags, 
rolled our bodies in blankets, and slept a little. 

The next thing was a long rustle about us, stealing 
in upon us, urgently whispering us to rise and mount 



THE WAK-MACHINE MOVES FORWAED. 141 

and move. The moon had passed overhead. It was 
one o'clock. The square rustled into life and motion, 
bent forward, and started, half asleep. No man spoke, 
and no light showed, but the sand- muffled trampling 
and the moon- veiled figures forbade the fancy that it 
was all a dream. The shapes of lines of men — now 
close, now broken, and closing up again as the ground 
broke or the direction changed — the mounted officers, 
and the hushed order, "Left shoulder forward," the 
scrambling Maxim mules, the lines of swaying camels, 
their pungent smell, and the rare neigh of a horse, 
the other three squares like it, which we knew of 
but could not see, — it was just the same war-machine 
as we had seen all these days on parade. Only this 
time it was in deadly earnest, moving stealthily but 
massively forward towards an event that none of us 
could quite certainly foretell 

We marched till something after four, then halted, 
and the men lay down again and slept. The rest 
walked up and down in the gnawing cold, talking to 
one and another, wondering in half- voices were we 
there, would they give us a fight or should we find 
their lines empty, how would the fight be fought, and, 
above all, how were we to get over their zariba. For 
Mahmud's zariba was pictured very high, and very 
thick, and very prickly, which sounded awkward for 
the Cameron Highlanders, who were to assault it. 
Somebody had proposed burning it, either with war- 
rockets or parafiSn and safety matches ; somebody else 



142 THE BATTLE OF THE ATBARA. 

suggested throwing blankets over it, though how you 
throw blankets over a ten by twenty feet hedge of 
camel-thorn, and what you do next when you have 
thrown them, the inventor of the plan never ex- 
plained. Others favoured scaling-ladders, apparently 
to take headers off on to the thorns and the enemy's 
spears, and even went so far as to make a few ; most 
were for the simpler plan of just taking hold of it and 
pulling it apart. But how many of the men who 
pulled would ever get through the gap? 

Now the sun rose behind us, and the men rose, too, 
and we had arrived. Bimbashi Fitton had led the 
four brigades in the half-light to within 200 yards of 
the exact positions they were to take in the action. 
Now, too, we saw the whole army — right of us 
Macdonald's, right of him, again. Maxwell's, to our left 
rear Lewis's in support, far away leftward of them 
the grey squadrons of the cavalry. The word came, 
and the men sprang up. The squares shifted into the 
fighting formations: at one impulse, in one superb 
sweep, near 12,000 men moved forward towards the 
enemy. All England and all Egypt, and the flower 
of the black lands beyond, Birmingham and the West 
Highlands, the half-regenerated children of the earth's 
earliest civilisation, and grinning savages from the 
uttermost swamps of Equatoria, muscle and machinery, 
lord and larrikin, Balliol and the Board School, the 
Sirdar's brain and the camel's back — all welded into 
one, the awful war machine went forward into action. 



THE FIRST GUN. 143 

We could see their position quite well by now, 
about a mile and a half away — the usual river fringe 
of grey -green palms meeting the usual desert fringe 
of yellow-grey mimosa. And the smoke-grey line in 
front of it all must be their famous zariba. Up from 
it rolled a nimbus of dust, as if they were still busy 
at entrenching ; before its right centre fluttered half a 
dozen flags, white and pale blue, yellow and pale 
chocolate. The line went on over the crunching 
gravel in awful silence, or speaking briefly in half- 
voices — went on till it was not half a mile from the 
flags. Then it halted. Thud! went the first gun, 
and phutt! came faintly back, as its shell burst 
on the zariba into a wreathed round cloud of just 
the zariba's smoky grey. I looked at my watch, 
and it marked 6.20. The battle that had now 
menaced, now evaded us for a month — the battle 
had begun. 

Now, from the horse battery and one field battery 
on the right, from two batteries of Maxim-Nordenfelts 
on the left, just to the right front of the British, and 
from a war-rocket which changed over from left to 
right, belched a rapid, but unhurried, regular, relent- 
less shower of destruction. The round grey clouds 
from shell, the round white puffs from shrapnel, the 
hissing splutter of rockets, flighted down methodi- 
cally, and alighted on every part of the zariba and of 
the bush behind. A fire sprang and swarmed redly 
up the dried leaves of a palm-tree; before it sank 



144 THE BATTLE OF THE ATBARA. 

another flung up beside it, and then another. When 
the shelling began a few sparse shots came back ; one 
gunner was wounded. And all over the zariba we 
saw dust -clothed figures strolling unconcernedly in 
and out, checking when a shell dropped near, and 
then passing contemptuously on again. The enemy's 
cavalry appeared galloping and forming up on our 
left of the zariba, threatening a charge. But tut-tui- 
tut-tut went the Maxims, and through glasses we 
could see our cavalry trembling to be at them. And 
the Baggara horseiaen, remembering the guns that 
had riddled them and the squadrons that had shorn 
through them three days before, fell back to cover 
again. By now, when it had lasted an hour or more, 
not a man showed along the whole line, nor yet a 
spot of rifle smoke. All seemed empty, silent, lifeless, 
but for one hobbled camel, waving his neck and 
stupid head in helpless dumb bewilderment. Pres- 
ently the edge of the storm of devastation caught 
him too, and we saw him no more. 

An hour and twenty minutes the guns spoke, and 

then were silent. And now for the advance along the 

whole line. Maxwell's brigade on the right — 12th, 

13th, and 14th Sudanese to attack and 8th Egyptian 

supporting — used the Egyptian attack formation, — 

our companies of a battalion in line and the other 

wo in support. Macdonald, — 9th, 10th, and 11th 

udanese in front and 2nd Egyptian supporting, — his 

space being constricted, had three companies in Uim 



THE CAMEEONS ADYAJfCK 146 

and three in support. The British had the Camerons 
in line along their whole front; then, in columns of 
their eight companies, the Lincoln s on the right, the 
Seaforths in the centre, and the Warwicks, two com- 
panies short, on the left : the orders to these last were 
not to advance till it was certain the dervish cavalry 
would not charge in flank, Lewis's three -battalion 
brigade — 3rd, 4th, and 7th Egyptian — had by this 
time two battalions to the British left rear and one 
forming square round the water - camels. All the 
artillery accompanied the advance. 

The Camerons formed fours and moved away to the 
left, then turned into line. They halted and waited 
for the advance. They were shifted back a little to 
the right, then halted again. Then a stafif officer 
galloped furiously behind their line, and shouted some- 
thing in the direction of the Maxim battery. "Ad- 
vance ? " yelled the major, and before the answer 
could come the mules were up to the collar and the 
Maxims were up to and past the left flank of the 
Camerons. They stood still, waiting on the bugle — a 
line of khaki and dark tartan blending to purple, of 
flashing bayonets at the slope, and set, two-month- 
bearded faces strained towards the zariba. In the 
middle of the line shone the Union Jack. 

The bugle sang out the advance. The pipes screamed 
battle, and the line started forward, like a ruler drawn 
over the tussock-broken sand. Up a low ridge they 
moved forward : when would the Dervishes fire ? The 



146 THE BATTLE OF THE ATEAEA. 

Camerons were to open from the top of the ridge, only 
300 yards short of the zariba ; up and up, forward 
and forward: when would they fire? Now the line 
crested the ridge — the men knelt down. " Volley- 
firing by sections " — and crash it came. It came from 
both sides, too, almost the same instant. Wht-t, 
wht-t, wht-t piped the bullets overhead: the line 
knelt very firm, and aimed very steady, and crash 
crash, crash they answered it. 

! A cry more of dismayed astonishment than 
of pain, and a man was up on his feet and over on 
his back, and the bearers were dashing in from 
the rear. He was dead before they touched him, 
but already they found another for the stretcher. 
Then bugle again, and up and on: the bullets were 
swishing and lashing now like rain on a pond. But 
the line of khaki and purple tartan never bent nor 
swayed ; it just went slowly forward like a ruler. 
The ofi&cers at its head strode self-containedly — they 
might nave been on the hill after red-deer ; only from 
their locked faces turned unswervingly towards the 
bullets could you see that they knew and had despised 
the danger. And the unkempt, unshaven Tommies, 
who in camp seemed little enough like Covenanters or 
Ironsides, were now quite transformed. It was not so 
difficult to go on — the pipes picked you up and carried 
you on — but it was difficult not to hurry ; yet whether 
they aimed or advanced they did it orderly, gravely, 
without speaking. The bullets had whispered to raw 



mSIDB THE ZARIBA, 147 

youngsters in one breath the secret of all the glories 
of the British Army. 

Forward and forward, more swishing about them 
and more crashing from them. Now they were 
moving, always without hurry, down a gravelly in- 
cline. Three men went down without a cry at the 
very foot of the Union Jack, and only one got to 
his feet again ; the flag shook itself and still blazed 
splendidly. Next, a supremely furious gust of bullets, 
and suddenly the line stood fast. Before it was a 
loose low hedge of dry camel-thorn — the zariba, the 
redoubtable zariba. That it ? A second they stood 
in wonder, and then, " Pull it away," suggested some- 
body. Just half-a-dozen tugs, and the impossible 
zariba was a gap and a scattered heap of brushwood. 
Beyond is a low stockade and trenches ; but what of 
that ? Over and in ! Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah ! 

Now the inside suddenly sprang to life. Out of 
the earth came dusty, black, half-naked shapes, run 
ning, running and turning to shoot, but running 
away. And in a second the inside was a wild con- 
fusion of Highlanders, purple tartan and black-green, 
too, for the Seaforths had brought their perfect columns 
through the teeth of the fire, and were charging in at 
the gap. Inside that zariba was the most astounding 
labyrinth ever seen out of a nightmare. It began with 
a stockade and a triple trench. Beyond that the bush 
was naturally thick with palm stem and mimosa- 
thorn and halfa-grass. But, besides, it was as full of 



148 THE BATTLE OF THE ATBARA. 

holes as any honeycomb, only far less regular. There 
was a shelter -pit for every animal — here a donkey 
tethered down in a hole just big enough for itself and 
its master; beside it a straw hut with a tangle of 
thorn ; yawning a yard beyond, a larger trench, choke- 
full of tethered camels and dead or dying men. There 
was no plan or system in it, only mere confusion of 
stumbling-block and pitfall. From holes below and 
hillocks above, from invisible trenches to right and 
innocent tukls to left, the bewildered bullets curved, 
and twisted, and dodged. It took some company- 
leading; for the precise formations that the bullets 
only stiffened were loosening now. But the ofi&cers 
were equal to it: each picked his line and ran it, and 
if a few of his company were lost — kneeling by green- 
faced comrades or vaguely bayoneting along with a 
couple of chance companions — they kept the mass 
centred on the work in hand. 

For now began the killing. Bullet and bayonet 
and butt, the whirlwind of Highlanders swept over. 
And by this time the Lincolns were in on the right, 
and the Maxims, galloping right up to the stockade, 
had withered the left, and the Warwicks, the enemy's 
cavalry definitely gone, were volleying off the blacks 
as your beard comes off under a keen razor. Farther 
and farther they cleared the ground — cleared it of 
everything like a living man, for it was left carpeted 
thick enough with dead. Here was a trench ; bayonet 
that man. Here a little straw tukl; warily round 



"A VBKY GOOD FIGHT." 149 

to the door, and then a volley. Now in eolumik 
through this opening in the bushes ; then into line, and 
drop those few desperately firing shadows among the 
dry stems beyond. For the running blacks — poor 
heroes — stni fired, though every second they fired less 
and ran more. And on, on the British stumbled and 
slew, till suddenly there was unbroken blue overhead, 
and a clear drop underfoot. The river ! And across 
the trickle of water the quarter-mile of dry sand-bed 
was a fly-paper with scrambling spots of black. The 
pursuers thronged the bank in double line, and in two 
minutes the paper was still black-spotted, only the 
spots scrambled no more. "Now that," panted the 
most pessimistic senior captain in the brigade — " now 
I call that a very good fight." 

"Cease fire! Word and whistle and voice took a 
little time to work into hot brains ; then sudden 
silence. Again, hurrah, hurrah, hurrah ! It had lasted 
forty minutes ; and nobody was quite certain whether 
it had seemed more like two minutes or two years. 
All at once there came a roar of fire from the left ; 
the half-sated British saw the river covered with a 
new swarm of flies, only just in time to see them stop 
still as the others. This was Lewis's half-brigade of 
Egyptians at work. They had stood the heavy fire 
that sought them as if there were no such things as 
wounds or death ; now they had swept down leftward 
of the zariba, shovelled the enemy into the river-bed, 
and shot them down. Bloodthirsty ? Count up the 



150 THE BATTLE OF THE ATBAEA. 

Egyptians murdered by Mahdism, and then say so if 
you will. 

Meanwhile, all the right-hand part of the zariba was 
alive with our blacks. They had been seen from the 
British line as it advanced, ambling and scrambling 
over rise and dip, firing heavily, as they were ordered 
to, and then charging with the cold bayonet, as they 
lusted to. They were in first, there cannot be a doubt. 
Their line formation turned out a far better one for 
charging the defences than the British columns, which 
were founded on an exaggerated expectation of the 
difficulty of the zariba, and turned out a trifle unhandy. 
And if the zariba had been as high and thick as the 
Bank of England, the blacks and their brigaded 
Egyptians would have slicked through it and picked 
out the thorns after the cease fire. As against that, 
they lost more men than the British, for their advance 
was speedier and their volleys less deadly than the 
Camerons' pelting destruction that drove through every 
skull ra"ised an inch to aim. 

But never think the blacks were out of hand. They 
attacked fast, but they attacked steadily, and kept 
their formation to the last moment there was any- 
thing to form against. The battle of the Atbara has 
definitely placed the blacks — yes, and the once con- 
temned Egyptians — in the ranks of the very best 
troops in the world. When it was over their officers 
were ready to cry with joy and pride. And the blacks, 
every one of whom would beamingly charge the 



THE JUBILANT SUDANESE. 151 

bottomless pit after his Bey, were just as joyous and 
proud of their officers. They stood about among the 
dead, their faces cleft with smiles, shaking and shaking 
each other's hands. A short shake, then a salute, 
another shake and another salute, again and again and 
again, with the head-carving smile never narrowed an 
instant. Then up to the Bey and the Bimbashis — 
mounted now, but they had charged afoot and clear 
ahead, as is the recognised wont of all chiefs of the 
fighting Sudan when they intend to conquer or die 
with their men — and more handshakes and more 
salutes. " Bushman gudiss kitir" ran round from grin 
to grin ; •' very good fight, very good fight." 

Now fall in, and back to the desert outside. And 
unless you are congenitally amorous of horrors, don't 
look too much about you. Black spindle-legs curled 
up to meet red-gimbleted black faces, donkeys head- 
less and legless, or sieves of shrapnel, camels with 
necks writhed back on to their humps, rotting already 
in pools of blood and bile-yellow water, heads without 
faces, and faces without anything below, cobwebbed 
arms and legs, and black skins grilled to crackling on 
smouldering palm-leaf, — don't look at it. Here is the 
Sirdar's white star and crescent ; here is the Sirdar, 
who created this battle, this clean-jointed, well-oiled, 
smooth-running, clockwork-perfect masterpiece of a 
battla Not a flaw, not a check, not a jolt ; and not a 
fleck on its shining success. Once more, hurrah, 
hurrah, hurrah ! 



XVIII 

LOSSES AND GAINS 

It was over. It was a brilliant, crushing victory, and 
the dervish army was destroyed : so much everybody 
knew. But no more. The fight had gone forward in 
a whirl : you could see men fall about you, and knew 
that there must be losses on our side; but whether 
they were 100 or 1000 it was impossible even to 
guess. Then, as the khaki figures began to muster 
outside the zariba, it was good to meet friend after 
friend — dusty, sweaty, deep-breathing, putting up a 
grimed*revolver — untouched. It was good to see the 
Tommies looking with new adoration to the comfort of 
their rifles, drunk with joy and triumph, yet touched 
with a sudden awe in the presence of something so 
much more nakedly elemental than anything in their 
experience. Two hours had sobered them from boys 
to men. Just then there was nothing in the world or 
under it to which the army would not have been equal. 
Yet, in that Godlike moment, I fancy every man in 
the force thought first of home. 



MAHMUD A PRISONKS. 153 

Now to see what we had done and suffered. And 
first, for a new fillip to exultation, Mahmud was a 
prisoner. Some soldiers of the 10th Sudanese had 
found him as they swept through the zariba — found 
him sitting on his carpet, his weapons at his side, after 
the manner of defeated war-chiefs who await death. 
He was not killed, and presently he was brought bare- 
headed before the Sirdar — a tall, dark-brown com- 
plexioned man of something between thirty and forty. 
He wore loose drawers and a gibba — the dervish 
uniform which still mimics the patched shirt of the 
Mahdi, but embroiders it with gold. His face was 
of the narrow- cheeked, high-foreheaded type, for he 
is a pure-bred Arab: his expression was cruel, but 
high. He looked neither to right nor to left, but 
strode up to the Sirdar with his head erect. 

'" Are you the man Mahmud ? " asked the Sirdar. 

" Yes ; I am Mahmud, and I am the same as you." 
He meant commander-in-chief. 

" Why did you come to make war here I " 

" I came because I was told, — the same as you." 

Mahmud was removed in custody ; but everybody 
liked him the better for looking at his fate so straight 
and defiantly. 

But small leisure had anybody to pity Mahmud: 
the pity was all wanted for our own people. Hardly 
had the Camerons turned back from the river-bank 
when it flew through the companies that two of the 
finest officers in the regiment were killed. Captains 



154 LOSSES AND GAINS. 

Urquhart and Findlay had both been killed leading 
their men over the trenches. The first had only 
joined the battalion at Eus Hudi; he had newly 
passed the Staff College, and only two days before 
had been gazetted major ; after less than a fortnight's 
campaigning he was dead. Captain Findlay's fortune 
was yet more pathetic: he had been married but a 
month or two before, and the widowed bride was not 
eighteen. He was a man of a singularly simple, sincere, 
and winning nature, and the whole force lamented 
his loss. Probably his great height — for he stood 
near 6 feet 6 inches — had attracted attack besides 
his daring: he was one of the first, some said the 
first, to get over the stockade, and had killed two of 
the enemy with his sword before he dropped. Both 
he and Captain Urquhart had got too far ahead of 
their men to be protected by rifle fire ; but they were 
followed, and they were avenged. 

Second-Lieutenant Gore of the Seaforths was also 
killed while storming the trenches : he had not yet, 
I thinkj completed one year's service. Among the 
wounded officers were Colonel Verner of the Lincolns 
and Colonel Murray of the Seaforths, both slightly: 
the latter was very coolly tied up by Mr Scudamore, 
the 'Daily News' correspondent, inside the zariba 
under a distracting fire. More severely hit were 
Major Napier (Camerons) and Captain Baillie (Sea- 
forths): both were excellent officers and good com- 
panions ; both afterwards died. Besides these the 



THE CASUALTIES. 166 

Seaforths had three officers wounded, the Lincolns 
two, and the "War wicks one. Most of the casualties 
occurred in crossing the trenches, which were just wide 
enough for a man to stand in and deep enough to 
cover him completely. As our men passed over, the 
blacks fired and stabbed upwards ; most of the wounds 
were therefore below the belt. 

The Seaforths happened to have most officers hit 
among the four battalions of the British brigade ; as 
they advanced in column against the hottest part of 
the entrenchment, this was quite comprehensible. But 
the Camerons, who led the whole brigade in line, lost 
most in non-commissioned officers and men. Count- 
ing officers, they had 15 killed and 46 wounded. The 
Seaforths lost (again with officers) 6 killed and 27 
wounded ; the Lincolns 1 killed and 18 wounded ; and 
the War wicks 2 killed and 12 wounded. Of these 
several afterwards died. Staff-Sergeant Wyeth, A.S.O., 
and Private Cross of the Camerons, were both men- 
tioned in despatches. The first carried the Union 
Jack, which was three times pierced; the other was 
General Gatacre's bugler. Wyeth was severely 
wounded, and Cross presently seized with terrible 
dysentery: both died within a few days. Private 
Cross had bayoneted a huge black who attacked the 
general at the zariba, and it was said he was to be 
recommended for the Y.C. A similar feat was done 
by a colour-sergeant of the Camerons, whose major 
was entangled in the stockade, and must have been 



156 LOSSES AND GAINS. 

killed. The colour- sergeant never even mentioned 
the service to his officer, who only discovered it by 
accident. Of course there were scores of hair-breadth 
escapes, as there must be in any close engagement. 
One piper was killed with seven bullets in his body ; 
a corporal in another regiment received seven in his 
clothing, one switchbacking in and out of the front 
of his tunic, and not one pierced the skin. Another 
man picked up a brass box inside the zariba, and 
put it in his breast pocket, thinking it might come 
in useful for tobacco. Next instant a bullet hit it 
and glanced away. The Maxim battery had no 
casualties — very luckily, for it was up with the 
firing - line all the time ; probably nobody could 
stand up against it. Altogether the British brigade 
lost 24 killed and 104 wounded, of whom perhaps 
20 died. 

The Egyptian loss was heavier. They had advanced 
more quickly, and by reason of their line formation 
had gt)t to work in the trenches sooner than the 
British ; but they had not kept down the enemy's fire 
with such splendid success. The 11th Sudanese, 
which had the honour of having been one of the first 
inside the zariba, lost very heavily — 108 killed and 
wounded out of less than 700. The total casualties 
were 57 killed, and 4 British and 16 native officers, 
2 British non - commissioned officers, and 365 non- 
commissioned officers and men wounded. The white 
officers were Walter Bey and Shekleton Bey, com- 



A CHEAP VICTOET. 157 

manding the 9th and 14th Sudanese respectively, 
and Bimbasliis Walsh and Harley of the 12th 
Sudanese. The former lost his leg. The instructors 
were Sergeants Handley of the 9th and Hilton of the 
12th. Thus, out of five white men, the 12th had three 
hit. More officers would probably have been hit, but 
that none except the generals were allowed to ride. 
Generals Hunter, Macdonald, and Maxwell all rode 
over the trenches at the head of their men. 

The total of casualties, therefore, works out at 81 
killed and 493 wounded, out of a strength probably a 
little short of 12,000. It was not a wholly bloodless 
victory, but beyond question it was a wonderfully 
cheap one. For the results gained could not be over- 
stated : Mahmud's army was as if it had never been. 
These two short hours of shell and bullet and bayonet 
had erased it from the face of the earth. 

A scribe taken prisoner at Shendi said that the force 
which marched north had been officially reported to 
the Khalifa as 18,941 fighting men. The report may 
or may not have been true : in any case Mahmud had 
not this strength on Good Friday. Some had been 
shot from the gunboats or by the 4th Battalion on 
Shebaliya Island as they came down the river ; some 
had been killed in the skirmishes at Khor Abadar, or 
in General Hunter's reconnaissances outside Nakheila. 
Many had deserted. Mahmud himself said that his 
strength on the 8th was 12,000 infantry and 4000 
cavalry, with 10 guns. Some days afterwards he 



158 LOSSES AND GAINS. 

asserted that his cavalry had left him the day before, 
but that was the brag of returning confidence. We all 
saw his cavalry. 

To be sure, the cavalry did get away ; and Osman 
Digna, who never fights to a finish, got away with 
them. The cavalry did nothing and behaved badly, 
which is significant. For the cavalry were Baggara — 
the cattle-owning Arabs of the Khalifa's own tribe, 
transplanted by him from Darfur to the best lands 
round Omdurman. They are the lords of the Sudan 
— and ingloriously they ran away. On the other hand, 
the Jehadia, the enlisted black infantry, fought most 
nobly. If their fire seemed bad to us, what hell must 
ours have been to them ! First an hour and a half of 
shell and shrapnel — the best ammunition, perfectly 
aimed and timed, from some of the deadliest field- 
pieces in the world ; then volley after volley of blunted 
Lee-Metf ord and of Martini bullets, delivered coolly at 
300 yards and less, with case and Maxim fire almost 
point-blank. The guns fired altogether 1500 rounds, 
mostly shrapnel; the Camerons averaged 34 rounds 
per man. A black private, asked by his Bimbashi how 
many rounds he fired, replied, " Only 15." " Why, 
you're not much of a man," said his officer. " Ah, but 
then, Efiendim," he eagerly excused himself, " I had to 
carry a stretcher besides." If the black bearer-parties 
fired 15 rounds, what must the firing-line have done ! 
Mahmud said that his people had only laughed at the 
shrapnel, but that the infantry fire was Sheitun tarn- 



TESOCIOUS HEBOISM. 159 

am — the very devil. Mahmud, however, admitted 
mat, having been round the position, he lay close in 
his stockade during the bombardment; and as his 
stockade, or casemate, was the strongest corner in the 
place, he can hardly speak for the rest. And I saw 
scores and hundreds of dead goats and sheep, donkeys 
and camels, lying in pits in the part of the zariba 
stormed by the British. Now Thomas Atkins does not 
kill animals needlessly, even when his blood is hottest. 
The beasts therefore must have been killed by shrap- 
nel ; and if so many beasts, we may presume that many 
men, no better protected, were killed too. And so, I 
am afraid, unavoidably, were many women, for the 
zariba was full of them. 

Yet the black Jehadia stood firm in their trenches 
through the infernal minutes, and never moved till 
those devilish white Turks and their black cousins 
came surging, yelling, shooting, and bayoneting right 
on top of them. Many stayed where they were to die, 
only praying that they might kill one first. Those 
who ran, ran slowly, turning doggedly to fire. The 
wounded, as usual, took no quarter; they had to be 
killed lest they should kill. For an example of their 
ferocious heroism, I cite a little, black, pot-bellied boy 
of ten or so. He was standing by his dead father, 
and when the attackers came up, he picked up an 
elephant-gun and fired. He missed, and the kicking 
monstei half -killed him; but he had done what he 
could. 



160 LOSSES AJSD GAINS. 

In the zariba itself Bimbashi "Watson, A.D.C. to the 
Sirdar, counted over 2000 dead before he was sick of. 
it. There were others left : trench after trench was: 
found filled with them. A few were killed outside the 
zariba ; a great many were shot down in crossing the 
river-bed. Altogether 3000 men must have been 
killed on the spot ; among them were nearly all the 
Emirs, including Wad Bishara, who was Governor of 
Dongola in 1896. But this was not half the signifi- 
cance of the victory, Now you began to comprehend 
the perfection of the Sirdar's strategy. If he had 
waited for Mahmud on the Nile, fugitives could have 
escaped up-stream. If he had waited low down the 
Atbara, they could still have got across to the Nile. 
But by giving battle up at Nakheila, he gave the 
escaping dervish thirty miles of desert to struggle 
across before he could reach water and such safety 
as the patrolling gunboats would allow him. A few 
may have got back to Omdurman — if they dared; 
some certainly were afterwards picked off by the 
gunboats in the attempt. Others fled up the Atbara ; 
many were picked up by the cavalry through the 
afternoon : some got as far as Adarama or even near 
Kassala, and were killed by the friendly levies there. 
For the wounded the desert was certain death. In 
a word, the finest dervish army was not. Eetreat 
was impossible, pursuit superfluous ; defeat was anni- 
hilation. 



XIX 



THE TRIUMPH 



"Catch 'em alive 1 Catch 'em alive O i 
If they once gets on the gum 
They'll pop off to kingdom come ; 
Catch 'em alive ! Catch 'em alive I 
For I am tiie fiyest man around the town." 



Back swung the blacks from battle. The band of the 
Twelfth specialises on Mr Gus Elen : it had not been 
allowed to play him during the attack — only the regi- 
mental march tUl the bandsmen were tired of it, and 
then each instrument what it liked — but now the air 
quoted came in especially apposite. 

They had caught 'em alive 0. Hardly one but had 
slung behind him a sword or a spine-headed spear, a 
curly knife, or a spiky club, or some other quaint 
captured murdering -iron. Some had supplemented 
their Martini with a Eemington, an inch calibre 
elephant - gun with spherical iron bullets or conical 
shells, a regulation Italian magazine rifle, a musket 
of Mahomet All's first expedition, a Martini of '85, or 



162 THE TRIUMPH. 

a Tower Eifle of '56 with a handful of the cartridges 
the sepoys declined to bite. Some had suits of 
armour tucked inside them ; one or two, Saracen 
helmets slung to their belts. Over one tarbush 
waved a diadem of black ostrich plumes. The whole 
regiment danced with spear-headed banners blue and 
white, with golden letters thereupon promising victory 
to the faithful. And behind half-a-dozen men tugged 
at one of Mahmud's ten captured guns ; they meant to 
ask the Sirdar if they might keep it. 

The band stopped, and a hoarse gust of song flung 
out. From references to Allah you might presume it 
a song of thanksgiving. Then, tramp, tramp, a little 
silence, and the song came again with an abrupt ex- 
ultant roar. The thin-legged, poker-backed shadows 
jerked longer and longer over the rough desert shingle. 
They had been going from six the bitter night before, 
and nothing to eat since, and Nakheila has been 111" 
in the shade, with the few spots of shade preoccupied 
by corpses. That being so, and remembering that 
the British and wounded had to follow, the Second 
Brigade condescended to a mere four miles an hour. 
And " By George ! you know," said the Bey, " they're 
lovely ; they're rippers. I've seen Sikhs and I've seen 
Gurkhas, and these are good enough for me. This has 
been the happiest day of my life. I wasn't happier 
the day I got the D.S.O. than I've been to-day." 

It was the happiest day of a good many lives. But 
forty all but sleepless hours on your feet or in your 



THE WOUNDED. 163 

saddle tell on the system in a climate that seesaws 
between a grill and an ice-machine. By the time I got 
in I was very contented to tie my horse by some whity- 
brown grass and tumble to sleep with my head on the 
saddle. At midnight dinner was ready ; then solid 
sleep again. Awaking at five, I found an ofl&cer of 
Colonel Lewis's brigade in his spurs and demanding 
tea. He had got in from Nakheila but two hours 
before, which brought his fast well over twenty-four 
hours and his vigil to close on forty-eight. 

For it isn't everybody that tramps back into camp 
from battle with bands and praises of Allah. Some 
stay for good, and it pricks you in your joy when you 
catch yourself thinking of that swift and wicked injus- 
tice. Why him ? Also some come home on their 
backs, or wrenched and moaning in cacolets bump- 
ing on baggage-camels. Lewis's never-weary, never- 
hungry Egyptians had been bringing in the wounded — 
carrying stretchers across twelve black miles of desert 
at something over a mile an hour. And General 
Hunter, who in the morning had been galloping bare- 
headed through the bullets, waving on the latest-raised 
battalion of blacks, now chose to spend the night play- 
ing guide to the crawling convoy. General Hunter 
could not do an unsoldierlike act if he tried. 

It was difficult after all to be sorry for most of the 
men who were hit, they were so aggressively not sorry 
for themselves. The afternoon of the fight they lay 
in a little palm-grove northward of the zariba under 



164 THK TRIUMPH. 

tents of blanket — a double row of khaki and grey 
flannel sliirt, with more blankets below them and 
above. One face was covered with a handkerchief; 
one man gasped constantly — just the gasp of the child 
that wants sympathy and doesn't like to ask for it ; 
one face was a blank mask of yellow white clay. The 
rest, but for the red-splashed bandages and the im- 
portunate reek of iodoform, might have been lying 
down for a siesta. Their principal anxiety — these 
bearded boys who had never fired a shot off the range 
before — was to learn what size of deed they had 
helped to do to-day. " A grahn' fight ? The best ever 
fought in the Sudan? Eh, indeed, sir; ah'm vara 
glahd to hear ye say so." " Now, 'ow would you sy, 
sir, this 'd be alongside them fights they've been 'avin' 
in India?" "Bigger, eh? Ah! Will it be in to- 
morrow's pyper ? Well, they'll be talkin' about us at 
'ome." It was not the unhappiest day in these men's 
lives either. 

The morrow of the fight brought a quiet morning 
— for all but correspondents, who had now to pay for 
many days of idle luxury — and in the afternoon we 
all marched off to the old camp at Abadar. Thence 
on Sunday the brigades were to march to their old 
quarters — British to Darmali, 1st to Berber, 2nd to 
Essillem, and 3rd to Fort Atbara. Everybody was 
agasp for the moving air and moving water of the 
Nile. But the British got very late into camp on 
Saturday night, and there was no longer any hurry, 



THE EETURN TO BERBBB. 165 

as there was no longer any enemy. So instead we 
had an Easter Sunday church-parade — men standing 
reverently four-square in the sand; in the middle 
the padre, square-shouldered and square-jawed, with 
putties and square boots showing under the surplice ; 
a couple of drums for lectern, and " Thanks be to God, 
who giveth us the victory," for text. 

On Monday, the 11th, the Sirdar rode into Fort 
Atbara, and the Egyptian brigades followed him. 
The British marched to Hudi, and thence across the 
desert to Darmali, their summer quarters. There 
began to be talk about leave. But before the cam- 
paign closed there was one inspiriting morning — the 
return to Berber. 

It was more like a Eoman triumph than anything 
you have ever seen — like in its colour, its barbarism, 
its intoxicating arrogance. The Sirdar reached Berber 
an hour or so after sunrise ; the garrison — Macdonald's 
brigade — had bivouacked outside. The Sirdar rode 
up to the once more enfranchised town, and was there 
received by a guard of honour of the 1st Egyptians, 
who had held the town during the campaign. The 
guns thundered a salute. Then slowly he started to 
ride down the wide main street — tall, straight, and 
masterful in his saddle. Hunter Pasha at his side, 
his staff and his flag behind him, then Lewis Bey 
and some of his officers from Fort Atbara, then a 
clanking escort of cavalry. At the gate he passed 
under a triumphal arch, and all the street was Vene- 



166 THE TRIUMPH. 

tian masts and bunting and coloured paper, and 
soldiers of the 1st presenting arms, and men and 
women and children shrieking shrill delight. 

Well might they ; for they have tried both rules, and 
they prefer that of Egypt. So they pressed forward 
and screamed " Lu, lu," as they saw returning the 
Sirdar and their Excellencies, these men of fair 
face and iron hand, just to the weak and swiftly 
merciless to the proud. And when these had passed 
they pressed forward still more eagerly. Farther 
behind, in a clear space, came one man alone, his 
hands tied behind his back. Mahmud ! Mahmud, 
holding his head up and swinging his thighs in a 
swaggering stride — but Mahmud a prisoner, beaten, 
powerless. When the people of Berber saw that, 
they were convinced. It was not a lie, then: the 
white men had conquered indeed. And many a dark- 
skinned woman pressed forward to call Mahmud 
"Dog" to his face: it was Mahmud, last year, who 
massacl^d the Jaalin at Metemmeh. 

By this time the Sirdar had come almost to the 
bazaar, at the north end of the town ; and there was a 
small platform with an awning. He dismounted, and so 
did the officers ; then took his stand, and in came the 
troops. At their head the brigadier — ^"old Mac," 
bronzed and grizzled, who has lived in camp and 
desert and battlefield these twenty years on end. 
Then the blacks, straight as the spears they looted at 
Nakheila, quivering with pride in their officers and 



THE FmEST SIGHT OF ALL. 167 

their own manhood — yet not a whit prouder than 
when they marched out a month before. Then the 
cavalry and the guns and the camel-corps — every arm 
of the victorious force. And Berber stood by and 
wondered and exulted. The band crashed and the 
people yelled. "Lu-u-u, lu-u-u-u" piped the black 
women, and you could see the brave, savage, simple 
hearts of the black men bounding to the appeal. 
And the Sirdar and General Hunter and the others 
stood above all, calm and commanding; below Bey 
and Bimbashi led battalion or squadron or battery, in 
undisturbed self-reliance. You may call the show 
barbaric if you like: it was meant for barbarians. 
The English gentleman, if you like, is half barbarian 
too. That is just the value of him. Here was this 
little knot of white men among these multitudes of 
black and brown, swaying them with a word or the 
wave of a hand upraised. Burned from the sun and 
red-eyed from the sand, carrying fifteen years' toil 
with straight backs, bearing living wounds in elastic 
bodies. They, after all, were the finest sight of the 
whole triumph — so fearless, so tireless, so confident 



EGYPT OUT OF SEASON 

Thekb was no difiference in Port Said. Ships want 
coal in July as in December: the black dust hung 
over the Canal in sullen fog, and the black demons of 
the pit wailed as they tripped from lighter to deck 
under their baskets. In the hotel the Levantine 
clerks and agents took their breakfast in white ducks 
under a punkah, but that was all the change. Black 
island of coal, jabbering island of beggars and touts, 
forlorn island cranked in by sea and canal and swamp 
and sand, Port Said in summer was not appreciably 
more God-forsaken than in the full season. 

Ismailia was not appreciably deader than usual. 
If anything, with half-a-dozen French summer gowns 
and a French bicycle club, in blue and scarlet jerseys, 
doing monkey-tricks in front of the station, it was a 
shade more alive. 

In Cairo came the awful change. Cairo the fashion- 
able, the brilliant, was a desolation. When you run 
into the station in the season, the platform is lined 



CAIEO IN JULY. 169 

with names of hotels on the gold-laced caps of under- 
porters : you can hardly step out for swarms of 
Arabs, who fight for your baggage. On the night of 
July 12, the platform showed gaunt and large and 
empty. The streets were hardly better — a few list- 
less Arabs in the square outside the station, and then 
avenue on avenue of silent darkness. 

By daylight Cairo looked like a ball-room the 
morning after. One hotel was shamelessly making 
up a rather battered face against next season. The 
verandah of Shepheard's, where six months ago you 
could not move for tea-tables, nor hear the band for 
the buzz of talk, was quite empty and lifeless; only 
one perspiring waiter hinted that this was a hotel 
The Continental, the centre of Cairene fashion, had a 
whole wing shuttered up; the mirrors in the great 
hall were blind with whiting, and naked suites of bed- 
room furniture camped out in the great dining-room. 
Some shops were shut; the rest wore demi-toilettes 
of shutter and blind ; the dozing shopkeepers seemed 
half -resentful that anybody should wish to buy in 
such weather. As for scarabs and necklaces and curi- 
osities of Egypt, they no longer pretended to think that 
any sane man could give money for such things. As 
you looked out from the Citadel, Cairo seemed dazed 
under the sun ; the very Pyramids looked as if they 
were taking a holiday. 

All that was no more than you expected : you knew 
that no tourists came to Egypt in July. But native 



170 EGYPT OUT OF SEASON. 

Egypt was out of season too. The streets that clacked 
with touts and beggars, that jingled with every kind 
of hawker's rubbish — you passed along them down 
a vista of closed jalousies and saw not a soul, heard 
not a sound. The natives must be somewhere, only 
where ? A few you saw at road-making, painting, and 
the like jobs of an off-season. But every native was 
dull, listless, hanging from his stalk, half dead. Eyes 
were languid and lustreless : the painter's head drooped 
and swayed from side to side, and the brush almost 
fell from his lax fingers. In the narrow bevel of 
shadow left under a wall by the high sun, flat on back 
or face, open-mouthed, half asleep, half fainting, gasped 
Arab Cairo — the parasite of the tourist in his holiday, 
the workman leaving his work, donkey-boy and donkey 
flat and panting together. 

Well might they gasp and pant ; for the air of 
Cairo was half dead too. You might drive in it at 
night and feel it whistle round you, but it did not 
refresh you. You might draw it into your lungs, but 
it did not fill them. The air had no quality in it, no 
body: it was thin, used up, motionless, too limp to 
live in. The air of August London is stale and close, 
poor ; exaggerate it fifty-fold and you have the air of 
July Cairo. You wake up at night dull and flaccid 
and clammy with sweat, less refreshed than when you 
lay down. You live on what ^leep you can pilfer 
during the hour of dawn. As you drive home at night 



NILELESS EGYPT. 171 

you envy the dark figure in a galabeah stretched on 
the pavement of Kasr-en-Nil bridge; there only in 
Cairo can you feel a faint stirring in the air. 

To put all in one word, Egypt lacks its Nile. The 
all-fathering river is at his lowest and weakest. In 
places he is nearly dry, and what water he can give 
the cracked fields is pale, green, unfertile. He was 
beginning to rise now, slowly ; presently would come 
the flood and the brown manuring water. The night 
wind would blow strongly over his broadened bosom, 
the green would spring out of the mud, and Egypt 
would be alive again. 

Only in one place was she alive yet — and that was 
the Continental Hotel Here all day sat and came 
and went clean-limbed young men in flannels, and 
at dinner-time the terrace was cool with white mess- 
jackets. Outside was the only crowd of natives in 
Cairo — a thick line of Arabs squatting by the opposite 
wall, nursing testimonials earned or bought, cooks 
and valets and grooms — waiting to be hired to go up 
the Nile. Up at the citadel they would show you the 
great black up-standing 40-pounder guns with which 
they meant to breach Khartum. Out at Abbassieh 
the 21st Lancers were changing their troop-horses for 
lighter Syrians and country-breds. The barrack-yard 
of Kasr-en-Nil was yellow with tents, and under a 
breathless afternoon sun the black-belted Eifle Brigade 
marched in from the station to fill them. The wilted 



172 EGYPT OUT OF SEASON. 

Arabs hardly turned their heads at the band; the 
Eifles held their shoulders square and stepped out 
with a rattle. 

The Egyptian may feel the sun ; the Englishman 
must stand up and march in it. You see it is his 
country, and he must set an example. And seeing 
Egypt thus Nileless, bloodless, you felt more than 
ever that he must lose no time in taking into firsB 
fingers the kejs of the Mle above Khartum. 



XXI 



GOING UP 



Ok the half -lit Cairo platform servants flung agonised 
arms round brothers' necks, kissed them all over, and 
resigned themselves to the horrors of the Sudan. In- 
side the stuffy carriages was piled a confusion of bags 
and bundles, of helmet-cases and sword-cases, of can- 
vas buckets cooling soda, and canvas bottles cooling 
water, — of Beys and Bimbashis returning from leave. 
It was rather like the special train that takes boys 
back to school. A few had been home — but the Sirdar 
does not like to have too many of his officers seen in 
Piccadilly; it doesn't look well. Some had been to 
Constantinople, to Brindisi and back for the sea, to 
San Stefano, the Ostend of Egypt, to Cairo and no 
farther. Like schoolboys, they had all been wild to 
get away, and now they were all wild to get back. 
Thank the Lord, no more Cairo — sweat all the night 
instead of sleep, and mosquitos tearing you to pieces. 
Give me the night-breeze of the desert and the clean 
sand of the Sudan. 



174 GOINQ UP. 

But first we had to tunnel through the filthiest 
seventeen hours in Egypt. The servants had spread 
our blankets on the bare, hard leather seats of the 
boxes that Egyptian railways call sleeping-cars; a 
faint grateful air began to glide in through the 
windows. And then came in the dust. Without haste 
— had it not seventeen hours before it ? — it streamed 
through every chink in a thick coffee-coloured cloud. 
It piled itself steadily over the seats and the floor, the 
bags and bundles and cases ; it built up walls of mud 
round the soda-water, and richly larded the half-cold 
chicken for the morrow's lunch. We choked ourselves 
to sleep; in the morning we choked no longer, the 
lungs having reconciled themselves to breathe powdered 
Egypt. Our faces were layered with coffee-colour, 
thicker than the powder on the latest fashionable 
lady's nose. Hair and moustaches, eyebrows and eye- 
lashes, and every corner of sun-puckered eyes, were 
lost and levelled in rich friable soil. And from the 
caked, sun-riven fields of thirsty Egypt fresh clouds 
rose and rolled and settled, till in all the train you 
saw, smelt, touched, tasted nothing but dust. 

At Luxor came the first novelty. When I came 
down the practicable railway stopped short there: 
now a narrow-gauge railway ran through to Assuan. 
It is not quite comprehensible why the gauge should 
have been broken, — perhaps to make sure that the 
line should be kept exclusively military. It can 
easily be altered afterwards to the Egyptian gauge; 



THE PBICE OF TAMING THE SUDAN. 175 

meanwhile the journey is done by train in twelve 
hours against the post-boat's thirty-six. 

Assuan was the same as ever. Shellal, at the head 
of the cataract, the great forwarding station for the 
South, was the same, only much more so. The high 
bank was one solid rampart of ammunition and beef, 
biscuit and barley; it clanged and tinkled all night 
through with parts of steamers and sections of barges. 
Stern -wheelers came down from the South, turned 
about, took in fuel, hooked on four barges alongside, 
and thudded off up-river again. No hurry ; no rest. 
And here was the same Commandant as when I came 
up before. He had had one day in Cairo ; his hair 
was two shades greyer ; he was still being reviled by 
everybody who did not have everything he wanted 
sent through at five seconds' notice; he was still 
drawing unmercifully on body and brain, and ripping 
good years out of his life to help to conquer the Sudan. 
Victory over dervishes may be won in an hour, may 
be cheap; victory over the man-eating Sudan — the 
victory of the railway, the steamer, the river — means 
months and years of toil and so much of his life lost, 
to every man that helps to win it. 

The steamer tinkered at her fourteen-year-old boiler 
for twenty hours, and then trudged off towards Haifa. 
She did the 200 odd miles in 77 hours, so that it 
would have been almost as quick to have gone by 
road in a wheelbarrow. But then the nuggars along- 
side were heavy with many sacks of barley, to be 



176 GOmG UP. 

turned later into cavalry chargers. Moreover, on the 
second morning, rounding a bend, we suddenly saw a 
line drawn diagonally across the river. All the water 
below the line was green ; all above it was brown 
And the brown pressed slowly, thickly forward, driv- 
ing the green before it. This was the Nile-flood, — the 
rich Abyssinian mud that comes down Blue Mle and 
Atbara. When this should have floated down below 
the cataract, Egypt would have water again, air again, 
bread again, life again. And the Sudan would have 
gunboats and barges of cartridges and gyassas of food 
and fodder, and the Sirdar thundering at the gates of 
Khartum. 

Next windy, green-treed Haifa — only this time it 
was less windy than last, and the trees, though still 
the greenest on the Nile, were not so green. Last 
time there had been melons growing on the sandy 
eyot opposite the commanderia, and the eyot had 
grown higher daily ; this time it was all dry sand 
and n(f melons, — only it grew daily smaller in the 
lapping water. But spring or summer, Haifa's busi- 
ness is the same — the railway and the recruits. That 
line was finished now up to the Atbara, and the fore- 
shore was clear of rails and sleepers. But instead 
they were forcing through stores and supplies, chok- 
ing the trucks to the throat with them. The glut had 
only begun when the line reached its terminus; it 
would be over before the new white brigade came 
through. Everything in the Sirdar's Expedition has 



CONTENTED BENE6ADES. 177 

its own time — first material, then transport, then 
troops; and woe unto him who is behind his time. 
The platform was black and brown, blue and white 
with a great crowd of natives. For drawn up in line 
opposite the waiting trucks were rigid squads of black 
figures in the familiar brown jersey and blue putties, 
and on the tarbushes the badges, green, black, red, 
yellow, blue, and white, of each of the six Sudanese 
battalions. Thin-shanked Shilliiks and Dinkas from 
the White Nile, stubby Beni-Helba from Darfur and 
the "West, — they were just the figures and huddled 
savage-smiling faces that we had last seen at Berber. 
Only — the last time we had seen those particular 
blacks they were shooting at us. Every one had begun 
life as a dervish, and had been taken prisoner at or 
after the Atbara. Now, not four months after, here 
they were, erect and soldierly, with at least the rudi- 
ments of shooting, on their way to fight their former 
masters, and very glad to do it. They knew when 
they were well off. Before they were slaves, half- 
clothed, half-fed, half-armed, good to lose their women 
at Shendi, and to stay in the trenches of Nakheila when 
the Baggara ran away. Now they are free soldiers, 
well paid, well clothed, well fed, with weapons they 
can trust and officers who charge ahead and would 
rather die than leave them. Their women — who, after 
all, only preceded them into the Egyptian army — are 
as safe from recapture at Haifa as you are in the 
Strand. No wonder the blacks grinned merrily as 



178 GOING UP. 

they bundled up on to the trucks, and the women 
lu-lu-lued them off with the head-stabbing shrillness 
of certain victory. 

The first time I travelled on the S.M.E. I enjoyed 
a berth in the large saloons ; the second time in one 
of the small saloons; this time it was a truck. But 
the truck, after all, was the most comfortable of the 
three. It was a long double-bogie, with a plank roof, 
and canvas curtains that you could let down when 
the sun came in, and eight angarebs screwed to the 
floor. Therein six men piled their smaller baggage, 
and set up their tables, and ate and drank and slept 
and yawned forty-eight hours to the Atbara. Of all 
the three months' changes in the Sudan, here were the 
most stupefying. Abeidieh, where the new gunboats 
had been put together, had grown from a hut and two 
tents to a railway station and triangle and watering- 
plant and engine -shed, and rows of seemly mud- 
barracks, soon to be hospital. But the Atbara was 
even more utterly transformed. I had left it a for- 
tified camp ; I found it a kind of Nine Elms. Lewis 
Bey's house, then the pride of the Sudan, now cowered 
in the middle of a huge mud -walled station -yard. 
Boxes and barrels and bags climbed up and over- 
shadowed and choked it. Ammunition and stores, 
food and fodder — the journey had been a crescendo 
of them, but this was the fortissimo. You wandered 
about among the streets of piles that towered over- 
head, and lost yourself in munitions of war. Along 



"FABTHER SOUTH." 179 

the Kile bank, where two steamers together had been 
a rarity, lay four. Another paddled ceaselessly to and 
fro across the river, where the little two-company 
camp had grown into lines for the cavalry and camel 
corps. Sliip- sparred gyassas fringed all the bank; 
lateen sails bellied over the full river. 

Of troops the place was all but empty ; the indis- 
pensable Egyptians were away up the river cutting 
and stacking wood for the steamers or preparing 
depots. In mid- April the Atbara was the as yet un- 
attained objective of the railway; in mid- July the 
railway was ancient history, and the Atbara was the 
port of departure for the boats. Just a half-way house 
on the road to Khartum. What a man the Sirdar is — 
if he is a man ! We got out and pitched our tents ; 
and here we found the men who had not been on 
leave — the railway and the water transport and the 
camel transport and the fatigues in general — working 
harder, harder, harder every day and every night. 
We drank a gin-and-soda to the master-toast c^ tbe 
Egyptian army : " Farther South 1 " 



XXII 

THE FIRST STEPS FORWARD 

At the beginning of August the military dispositions 
were not, on paper, very different from those of the 
end of April. The Sirdar's headquarters had been 
moved to the Atbara in order that the vast operations 
of transport at that point might go on under his own 
eye. Of the four infantry brigades which had fought 
against Mahmud, three were still in their summer 
quarters. Neither of the two additional brigades 
had yet arrived at the front. 

The force destined for Omdurman consisted of two 
infantry divisions, one British and one Egyptian ; one 
regiment of British and ten squadrons of Egyptian 
cavalry ; one field and one howitzer battery, and two 
siege-guns of British artillery and one horse and four 
field batteries of Egyptian, besides both British and 
Egyptian Maxims; eight companies of camel-corps; 
the medical service and the transport corps; six 
fighting gunboats, with eight transport steamers and 
a host of sailing boats. 



THE EGYPTIAN INFANTRY. 181 

The Egyptian infantry division was commanded, as 
before, by Major-General Hunter ; but it now counted 
four brigades instead of three. The First, Second, and 
Third (Macdonald's, Maxwell's, and Lewis's) were con- 
stituted as in the Atbara campaign. 

The commanding officers of battalions were the 
same except for the 13th Sudanese. Smith-Dorrien 
Bey, who originally raised the regiment, now com- 
manded in place of CoUinson Bey. The latter officer 
had been promoted to the command of the Fourth 
Brigade. It was entirely Egyptian — the 1st (Bim- 
bashi Doran), 5th (Borhan Bey, with native officers), 
17th (Bunbury Bey), and the newly -raised 18th (Bim- 
bashi Matchett). Of these the first was at Fort 
Atbara; the 17th and 18th were coming up from 
Merawi, hauling boats over the Fourth Cataract. 
They reached Abu Hamed by the beginning of 
August. The 5 th was half at Berber and half on 
the march across the desert from Suakim. The 
Third Brigade was at various points up-river, cutting 
wood for the steamers. 

The two Egyptian battalions (2nd and 8th) attached 
to the First and Second Brigades were at Nasri Island, 
ten miles or so from the foot of the Shabluka Cata- 
ract, forming a dep6t for supplies and stores. The 
six black battalions left Berber on July 30, and ar- 
rived at the Atbara in the small hours of August 1. 
Taking the strength of an Egyptian battalion at 750, 
the division would number 12,000 men. 



182 THB HBST STEPS fOBWABD. 

Majoi - General Gatacre commanded the British 
Division. Of its two brigades the First — the British 
Brigade of the last campaign, now under Colonel 
Wauchope — was still in summer quarters. Head- 
quarters, Camerons, Seaforths, and Maxim battery at 
Darmali; Lincolns and Warwicks at Essillem. The 
last two had changed commanding officers — Lieu- 
tenant-Colonel Louth now had the Lincolns, Lieu- 
tenant - Colonel Eorbes the Warwicks. The latter 
officer had arrived at Umdabieh two days before the 
Atbara fight to relieve Lieutenant - Colonel Quale 
Jones, ordered home to command the 2nd Battalion of 
the regiment; with rare tact and common -sense it 
was arranged that Colonel Jones should lead the bat- 
talion he knew. Colonel Forbes went into the fight 
as a free-lance, and I saw him enjoying himself like 
a schoolboy with a half - holiday. The Warwicks 
rejoiced once more in the possession of their two 
companies from the Merawi garrison. Casualties in 
action, and deaths and invahdings from sickness, had 
brought down the strength of this brigade, though 
officers and men had stood the climate exceedingly 
well. The sick-rate had never touched 6 per cent. 
There were not fifty graves in the cemetery ; and most 
of the faces at the mess- tables were familiar. The 
Lincolns, who had come up over 1100 strong, still had 
980 ; the other three battalions were each about 750 
strong, and the Warwicks were expecting a draft of 
sixty men. With the Maxims, A.S.C., and Medical 



THE BRITISH DIVISION. 183 

Service the strength of the brigade would come to 
nearly 3500. The Second Brigade had not yet come 
up from Egypt. Colonel Lyttelton was to command. 
The four battalions composing it were the 1st 
Korthumberland Fusiliers (5th, Lieutenant- Colonel 
Money) and 2nd Lancashire Fusiliers (20th, Lieu- 
tenant-Colonel CoUingwood) from the Cairo garrison, 
the 2nd Eifle Brigade (Colonel Howard) from Malta, 
and the 1st Grenadier Guards from Gibraltar. Each 
battalion was to come up over 1000 strong. The 1st 
Eoyal Irish Fusiliers, from Alexandria, were sending 
up a Maxim detachment with four guns, so that the 
whole division would number well over 7500. 

Broadwood Bey's nine squadrons of cavalry had 
concentrated during the last week of July on the 
western bank opposite Fort Atbara. They were to 
march up, starting on August 4, and to be joined 
at Metemmeh by a squadron from Merawi The 21st 
Lancers (Colonel Martin) were expected up from Cairo 
about 500 strong ; the total of the cavalry would be 
about 1500. British and Egyptian were to be separate 
commands. 

The whole of the artillery, on the other hand, was 
under Long Bey, of the Egyptian Army. The arrival 
of Bimbashi Stewart's battery from Merawi had com- 
pleted the strength of the Egyptian artillery ; both 
this battery and Bimbashi Peake's had been re-armed 
with 9-pounder Maxim-Nordenfeldts, so that all the 
field guns were now the same. These, with the horse 



184 THE FIRST STEPS FORWARD. 

battery, began to go up the Nile at the beginning of 
August — the pieces by boat, the horses and mules 
marching. The 32nd Field Battery RA. (Major Wil- 
liams), the 37th Field Battery with 5-inch howitzers 
and Lyddite shells and two 40-pounder siege guns, 
were coming up from Cairo. This would give a total 
of forty-four guns, besides twenty British and Egyp- 
tian Maxims. 

Two companies of camel corps were at the Atbara, 
timed to march on August 2. One was coming over 
from Suakim. The other five, under Tudway Bey, 
commanding the whole corps, were to start with the 
Merawi squadron of cavalry, about the same time, 
and march by Sir Herbert Stewart's route across the 
Bayuda Desert to Metemmeh. The strength would 
be about 800. The land force was thus over 22,000 
men. 

The three new gunboats — Malik, Sheikh, and Sultan 
— were put together at Abeidieh, the work beginning 
immediately after the battle of the Atbara, as soon 
as the railway reached that place. They carry two 
12|-pounder Maxim-Nordenfeldt quick-firers fore and 
aft, and three Maxims, two on the upper deck and 
one on a platform above. They are lightly armoured, 
being bullet-proof all over, and the screw is protected 
by being sunk in a plated well a few feet forward of 
the stern. As fighting boats they might be expected 
to show superior qualities to the vessels of the Zafir 
class ; but as beasts of burden with barges they were 



IF THE KHALIFA REFUSED BATTLE! 186 

inferior to these. Drawing only 18 inches against the 
older boat's 30 inches, they could not get grip enough 
of the water to make good headway against the full 
Nile. 

From the disposition of the force, extended along 
the Nile from Shabluka to Alexandria, and across the 
desert from Korti to Suakim, it was evident that the 
campaign had not yet opened by the beginning of 
August. The army was only entering on the move- 
ments preparatory to concentration. The point of 
concentration was "Wad Habashi, a dozen miles or so 
south of Shabluka ; the time was as yet uncertain. 
Transport was so far forward that we might easily get 
to Omdurman the first week in September. All de- 
pended on the weather. Up to now there had been 
hardly any rain. But the real rainy season — said 
Slatin Pasha, who is the only white man with real 
opportunity of knowing — runs from August 10 to 
September 10. It might be sooner or later, heavier 
or lighter. A swollen river, a flooded, torrent-riven 
bank, malaria and ague, would hold us back. A dry 
season would pass us gaily through. 

And when we advanced from Wad Habashi ? It 
was utterly impossible to say what would befall. If 
the Khalifa wanted to give us trouble, he would leave 
without fighting. That would probably mean that he 
would get his throat cut by one of the innumerable 
enemies he has made; certainly it would mean the 
collapse of his empire. But it would also mean a 



186 THB FISST STEPS FOSWASD. 

costly expedition with no finality at the end of it; 
it would mean years of anarchy, dacoity from Khar- 
tum to the Albert Nyanza, from Abyssinia to Lake 
Chad. Only there was always the relieving thought 
that Khalifa Abdullahi would aim not so much at 
giving trouble to us as at avoiding it for himself. 
With Mahmud's experience before his eyes he might 
think it safest to be taken prisoner. He might, just 
possibly, even decide to die game. 

Granting that he fought, it was still hopelessly un- 
certain where and how he would fight. It might be 
at Kerreri, sixteen miles north of his capital ; it might 
be inside his wall We could speculate for days ; we 
did ; but to come to any conclusion more likely tham 
any other was beyond any man m the armj. 



XXIII 

I 

IN SUMMER QUARTERS 

Scene of the dialogue, a mess-room in a village <m 
the Nile. Time, nearly lunch-time. A subaltern is 
discovered smoking a cigarette under the verandah. 
Enter I. 

Subaltern. Hallo, Steevens ! when did you come up ? 
Get down and have a drink. Hi, you syce! Take 
this hawaga's hoosan and take the sarg and bridle off 
and dini a drink of moyyah. What'll you drink ? . . . 
Oh no : this isn't so bad — better than Eas Hudi, any- 
how. You're looking at our pictures — out of the 
' Graphic,' you know — coloured them ourselves — helps 
you through the day, you know : that's a well-developed 
lady, isn't it? Have a cigarette, will you? We're 
all getting pretty well fed up with this place by now. 

Enter a Captain. Hallo, Steevens ! when did you 
come up? Have you got anything to drink? I 
suppose you've been at home all this time. No, I 
haven't been farther north than Berber. Had a very 
jolly ten days up the Atbara, though. Two parties 



188 m SUMMER QUARTERS. 

went— one with the General, one afterwards. Seven 
guns got a hundred and sixty-five sand-grouse in one 
day. Went up right beyond our battlefield. High ? 
Never smelt anything like it in my life. The bush 
gets very thick above. No; no lions. 

Szcbaltern. We got a croco down here, though, and a 
bally great fish with a head on him three feet six long, 
the head alone. No, I haven't been down either. I 
went down with a boat party to Geneineteh, though — 
ripping. There was a grass bank just six inches above 
the water, and you could bathe all day. The men 
loved it, if they were pretty fit to begin with ; if they 
weren't, you see, what with bully beef and dirty 
water 

Captain. But we're all getting fed up, as the 
Tommies say, with this place by now. 

Enter a Senior Captain. Hallo, Steevens ! I heard 
you'd come up. In this country it isn't "Have a 
drink," but " What'U you drink ? " Well, here we are 
stm m this filthy country. Yes, I got ten days in 
Cairo, but I was at the dentist's all the time. Gad, 
what a country ! When I think of all the lives that 
have been lost for this miserable heap of sand they 
call the Soudan — ugh! — it's — it's 

SvJbaltern. Eipping sport : everybody was wondering 
how the Pari Mutuel was done so well. The truth 
was, it was run by the same men of the Army Pay 
Departipent that do it at the races in Cairo. Devilish 
good race, too, the Atbara Derby. We thought we 



THE UNIVERSAL QUESTION. 189 

hadn't got a chance against all these Egyptian army 
fellows, and Fair won it by a head, Sparkes second, a 
bad third. 

Enter a Major. Well, Steevens, how are you ? Been 
up long ? Have a — - I see you've got one. Good 
to see all you fellows coming out again ; means busi- 
ness. River's very full to-day, isn't it ? 

Captain. Eisen three feet and an inch since yester- 
day. The Atbara flood, I suppose. You were at 
Atbara ; did you see it ? 

J. Eather. It came down roaring, hit the Nile, and 
piled up on end. Brought down trees, beams, dug- 
outs 

Major. Well, now, shall we go in to lunch ? You 
didn't see the First British Brigade field-firing to-day, 
did you? Nothing will come within 800 yards of that 
alive. Do you think we shall have a fight ? 

Enter a Colonel. Good morning, Mr Steevens : have 
you been up long ? Are you being attended to ? Yes, 
now ; shall we have a fight ? What will he do now ? 
I can't bear to think we aren't going to have a fight. 

Senior Captain. Fight ? wh 

Major. If he'd only come out into the open 

Captain. No ; he'll stick behind his 

Subaltern. Wall : then we shall have 

Major. Two days' bombardment ; but then, you 
know 

Colonel. Well, I wish we'd another brigade in re- 
serve to stay at 



190 m SUMMER QUARTERS. 

Senior Captain. Another brigade, sir? Why, it 
makes me sick to see all this preparation against 
such an enemy. We had 1500 men at Abu Klea, 
and now we've got 20,000. Fanatics ? Look at those 
men we fought at the Atbara, those miserable scally- 
wags. Do you call these fanatics? Sell their lives? 
give 'em away. Despise the enemy ; yes, I do despise 
them ; I despise them utterly. Eifles are too good for 
them. Sticks, sir, we ought to take to them — sticks 
with bladders on the end. Why, the moment we 
came to their zariba they got up and ran — got up like 
a white cloud and ran. And then all these prepara- 
tions and all this force ? They're a contemptible 
enemy — a wretched, despicable enemy. Why won't 
the Sirdar let the gunboats above Shabluka ? Because 
Beatty would take Khartum. 

Colcmel. Come, come now. But what'll you have to 
eat now ? 

General Conversation. Going to the Gymkhana this 
afternoon. . . . Squat on his hunkers inside hia 
wall . . . won't sell you a drop of milk, the surly 
devils, when we're saving their country . . . the 
houses at Omdurman are outside the wall, you know 
. . . not a bad notion of jumping, that bay pony . . . 
street -to- street fighting, we should lose a devil of a lot 
of men . . . did you hear the Guards cabled to ask 
what arrangements had been made for ice on the cam- 
paign ? . . . but then he can't defend his wall ; it 
hasn't got a banquette, and it's twelve feet high . . . 



THE BSCEUIT AND THE MIEAGI. 191 

gave the recruit their water-bottles to fill at the lake. 
*'Here, Jock," they said, "take mine too." So the 
wretched man started off With the water-bottles of 
the whole half-company to fill them at the mirage . . . 
have another drink . . . rather ; fed up with it ; rail- 
way fatigues, too, and field-days twice a-week ... it 
was their Colonel kept them from coming up, they 
say : damned fine regiment all the same . . . weakest 
Government of this century, sir . . . stowasser gaiters 
... go under canvas a couple of days before we 
start . . . ripping sport . . . fed up . . . drink . . . 

Colonel {rising). Well, now, will you have a cigarette? 

Senior Captain. A miracle of mismanagement. . . , 

Voice of Tommy (outside). Whatcher doin' ? 

Second voice. Gaucher see ? stickin' 'oods on these 
'ere cacolets. 

Voice of Tommy. Whatcher doin' that for ? 

Second voice. Doncher know? To kerry the bleed'n* 
Grenadier Gawds to Khartuio. 



XXIV 



DEPAETURES AND ARRIVALS 



On the 3rd of August the six Sudanese battalions 
left Fort Atbara for the point of concentration at 
Wad Habashi. Most people who saw them start 
remarked that they would be very glad to hear they 
had arrived. 

You may have seen sardines in tins ; but you 
will never really know how roomy and comfortable 
a tinned sardine must feel until you have seen blacks 
packed - on one of the Sirdar's steamers. Nothing 
but the Sirdar's audacity would ever have tried it; 
nothing but his own peculiar blend of luck and 
judgment would have carried it through without 
appalling disaster. 

Dressed in nothing but their white Friday shirt 
and drawers, the men filed on to the boats. Every 
man carried his blanket, for men from the Equator 
have tender chests, but it was difficult to see how 
he was ever to get into it. On each deck of each 



A MIRACLE OF TEAJSTSPOET. 193 

fiteamer they squatted, shoulder to shoulder, toe to 
back, chin to knee. Fast alongside each gunboat were 
a couple of double-decked roofed barges, brought out 
in sections from England for this very purpose. Both 
decks were jammed full of black men till you could 
not have pushed a walking-stick between them : the 
upper deck bellied under their weight like a ham- 
mock. At the tail of each gunboat floated a gyassa 
or two gyassas: in them you could have laid your 
blanket and slept peacefully on the soldiers' heads. 
Thus in this land of impossibilities a craft not quite 
so big as a penny steamer started to take 1100 men, 
cribbed so that they could not stretch arm or leg, 
100 miles at rather under a mile an hour. 

The untroubled Mle floated down brim-full, thick 
and brown as Turkish coffee, swift and strong as an 
ocean. The turbid Atbara came down swishing and 
rushing, sunk bushes craning their heads above the 
flood, and green Sodom apples racing along it like 
bubbles, and flung itself upon the Nile. Against the 
double streams the steamers — seven in all, bigger and 
smaller, with over 6000 men — pulled slowly, slowly 
southward. The faithful women, babies on their 
hips, screamed one more farewell: their life is a 
string of farewells, threaded with jewels of victori- 
ous return. The huddled heaps of white cotton and 
black skin began to blend together in the blurring 
sunlight. They started before breakfast; by lunch- 
time all but one had vanished round the elbow a 



194 DEPARTURES AND ARRIVALS. 

mile or two up-stream. The blacks were gone out 
to conquer again. 

Blacks gone, whites came. The Headquarters and 
first four companies of the Eifle Brigade were in camp 
before the steamers were under way. These things 
fit in like the joints of your body till you take them 
for the general course of things; only when you go 
to Headquarters and see Chiefs-of-Staff and D.A.A.G.S. 
and orderly-officers and aides-de-camp calculating and 
verifying and countersigning and telegraphing and 
acknowledging, do you realise that the staff-work of 
an army is the biggest and most business-like busi- 
ness in the world. 

The Rifles' first morning of Sudan was not endear- 
ing. They were shot out on to a little hillock or plat- 
form at half-past one in the morning, in the middle 
of one of the best dust-storms of the season. Through 
the throttled moonlight they might have seen, if they 
had cared to look at anything, the correspondent of 
the 'Baily Mail' hammering at his uptorn tent-pegs 
with a tin of saddle-soap, and howling dismally to a 
mummified servant to bring him the mallet. Tack, 
tack, tack went the mallets all over camp. But 
the Biflea had neither tents nor angarebs nor bags: 
they were dumped down among their baggage and sat 
down for five hours to contemplate the smiling Sudan. 
Then they disinterred themselves and their belongings 
and marched into camp. 

But this new brigade was to have a Cook's tour by 



TWO FAYOUEED EEGIMENTS. 196 

comparison with the other. They had abundant kit 
and abundant stores. From the sea to Shabluka they 
hardly needed to put foot to the ground : thence it was 
a matter of half-a-dozen marches to Khartum and Om- 
durman. Fight there — then into boats again and down 
to the rail-head at the Atbara ; train to Haifa, boat to 
Assuan, train to Cairo or Alexandria — the two new 
battalions, Eifles and Guards, might be up and down 
again, in and out of the country inside a couple of 
months. The sarcastic asked why they were not 
brought up in ice, unpacked at Omdurman to fight, 
and then packed in ice again. But that was unjust. 
Either you must give a regiment time to get fit and 
weed out its weaklings, or else you must cocker it all 
you can till you want it. The Eifles and Guards 
would never be as hard as the splendid sun-dried 
battalions of the First Brigade — there was not time 
to harden them. The next best thing was to keep 
them fresh and fit by sparing them as much as 
possible. 

So the Eifles made their camp on the Atbara bank 
— cool, airy, and relatively free from dust-drift. Next 
day — the 4th — the second half of the battalion came 
in; next day Brigadier- General Lyttelton with his 
staff and the 32nd field battery ; next day the first half 
of the Grenadier Guards. So they were timed to go on 
— half a battalion or a battery or a squadron nearly 
every morning till the whole second brigade was on 
the Atbara. Before the tail of it had arrived the head 



196 DBPARTUKES AifD ARKIVALS. 

would be off again — men and guns by boat, beasts by 
road — to Wad Habashi 

To transport 5000 men, 600 horses, two batteries 
with draught cattle, and two siege-guns some 1300 
miles along a line of rail and river within four weeks is 
not, perhaps, on paper, a very astounding achievement. 
But remember last time we came the same way. Ke- 
member 1884 — the voyageurs and the Seedee boys, the 
whalers and the troopers set to ride on camels and 
fight on foot, and all the rest of the Empire-ballet 
business — the force that left Cairo about the time of 
year these were leaving, that began to leave Haifa at 
the opening of September and struck the Nile at 
Metemmeh late in January, while most of it never got 
beyond Korti. It is exactly the difference between 
the amateur and the professional. 

Kemember, furthermore, that the railway from Luxor 
to Assuan and the railway from Haifa to the Atbara 
are both quite new : at home, with every engineering 
facility which is lacking in the Sudan, a new line is 
allowed a few months' trial to settle and mature before 
heavy traffic is run over it. The track is single, the 
engines are many of them old, the native officials are 
all of them incapable. The steamers are few and in 
great part old. The wind for the sailing boats was 
mostly contrary. The country is a howling red-hot 
depopulation. Yet every arriving vessel was not 
merely up to its time but a little before it. It wanted 
for nothing by the way, and when it arrived found 



THE PERFECTION OF METHOD. < 197 

provision for just three times as long as it was likely 
to need it. 

And all the time, remember, just the same thing 
was going on up the river. While the trains were bring- 
ing the British, the boats were taking the blacks. The 
gyasses sank their low wa;sts awash with the Nile- 
flood under groaning loads of supplies : the streets of 
boxes and sacks at the Atbara never seemed to grow 
less, but similar streets were rising at Nasri Island. 
Above us the bank was being stacked with wood for 
the steamers ; below us Egyptian battalions were haul- 
ing at more boats to take more supplies forward. All 
one steady pull along a rope 1300 miles long — a pull 
without a stumble, without a slack. And the Sirdar 
ran his eye along the whole tension of it, knowing 
every man's business better than he did himself. 
Only furious because the wind was south or west in- 
stead of north. He was not accustomed to such luck, 
and he did not deserve it. But neither did he succumb 
to it. The sailing boats went south all the same. The 
Sirdar told them to go south ; and somehow, tacking, 
towing, punting, Allah knows how, south it was. 



XXV 

THE PATHOLOGY OF THIRST 

If it had not been for the drink I should never hare 
come twice to the Sudan. 

It is part of the comprehensive uselessness of this 
country that its one priceless production can never 
be exported. If the Sudan thirst could be sent home 
in capsules, like the new soda-water sparklets, it would 
make any man's fortune in an evening. The irony 
of it is, that there is so much thirst here — such a 
limitless thirst as might supply the world's whole 
populafion richly : on the other side there are millions 
of our fellow - creatures, surrounded by every liquor 
that art can devise and patience perfect, but wanting 
the thirst to drink withal. Gentlemen in England 
now abed will call themselves accursed they were 
not here. And even the few white men who vainly 
strive to do justice to these stupendous depths and 
intensities, these vast areas and periods of thirst — 
how utterly and pitiably inadequate we are to our 
high opportunity. 



THE TRUE SUDAN THIRST. 199 

I wonder if you ever were thirsty ? Probably not. 
I never had been till I came to the Sudan, and that 
is why I came again. If you have been really thirsty, 
and often, you will be able to distinguish many vari- 
ations of the phenomenon. The sand-storm thirst I 
hardly count. It is caused by light soil forming in 
the gullet ; wash the soil away and the thirst goes 
with it : this can be done with water, which you do 
not even need to swallow. 

The desert thirst is more legitimately so called : it 
arises from the grilling sun on the sand, from the 
dancing glare, and from hard riding therein. This 
is not an unpleasant thirst: the sweat evaporates on 
your face in the wind of your own galloping, and 
thereby produces a grateful coolness without, whUe 
throat and gullet are white-hot within. The desert 
thirst consists in this contrast : it can be satisfied by a 
gulp or two of really cool water which has also been 
evaporating through a canvas bottle slung on youi 
saddle. 

But in so far as it can be satisfied, it is no true 
Sudan thirst. The true Sudan thirst is insatiable. 
The true Sudan thirst — which, to be sure, may be 
found in combination with either or both of the 
others, and generally is — is born of sheer heat and 
sheer sweat. Till you have felt it, you have not 
thirsted. Every drop of liquid is wrung out of your 
body: you could swim in your clothes; but, inside, 
your muscle shrinks to dry sponge, your bones to dry 



200 THE PATHOLOGY OF THIKST. 

pith. All your strength, your substance, your self is 
draining out of you ; you are conscious of a perpetual 
liquefaction and evaporation of good solid you. Tou 
must be wetted till you soften and swell to life again. 

You are wetted. You pour in wet, and your self 
sucks it in and swells — and then instantly it gushes 
out again at every pore, and the self contracts and wilts. 
You swill in more, and out it bubbles before you even 
feel your inside take it up. More — and your pores 
swish in spate like the very Atbara. Useless: you 
must give it up, and let the goodness sluice out of 
you. There is nothing of you left; you are a mere 
vacuum of thirst. And that goes on from three hours 
after sunrise till an hour before sundown. 

You must not think that we are idle all this while 
— not even correspondents. The real exercise of your- 
self and your ponies you have begun before breakfast, 
and intend to continue after tea. For the rest, at Fort 
Atbara, you can go down to the railway station. If 
there is a train there, there will be troops getting out 
of it ; if there is not, you can ask when one is expected, 
and read chalked on a notice-board the latest bulletin 
of the health of every engine on the road between there 
and Haifa. On the platform, too, is the post-office. You 
can ask when the next post goes out or comes in : the 
dirty Copt boy they call postmaster will answer, " To- 
morrow." The postal service is not good at Fort Atbara. 
They say the Sirdar does not allow it room enough; 
as the room he does allow is entirely filled with the 



HAED WORK AND NO REST. 201 

angarebs of the officials, and as they seldom arise from 
them, there is doubtless much justice in the complaint. 

There are other diversions for the correspondent in the 
heat of the day. He may walk in the nud, or station 
yard. Ntial is the Arabic for a place where things are 
dumped down — and dumped down in this nud they 
certainly are. Streets and streets and streets of them, 
— here a case of pepper, there the spare wheel of a gun, 
there jars of rum, there piles of Remington rifles for 
issue to more or less friendly tribes — everything that 
an army should or would or could w^nt There you see 
the men who do the real hard work of the army — not 
the men who work hard and then rest, but the men who 
work hard and never rest — the Director of the Water 
Transport, the Staff Officer for Supplies and Stores, the 
Director of Telegraphs. And there, with the hardest 
worked, you see the tall white-clad Sirdar working — 
now breaking a man's heart with curt censure, now 
exalting him to heaven with curt praise. Now ante- 
dating a movement, now hastening an embarkation, 
now increasing the load of a barge — for where the 
Sirdar is there every man and every machine must 
do a little better than his best. 

All this you may see, and sweat, between the hour 
before sunrise and the hour before sunset. It goes 
on always, but usually after sunset you look at it no 
more. 

For then the Sudan thirst has spent itself and it is 
at your mercy. You begin with a bombardment of 



202 THE PATHOLOGY OF THIRST. 

hot tea. The thirst thinks its conquest assured; it 
takes the hot tea for a signal of surrender, and hurls 
the first cup arrogantly out again through your skin. 
You fire in the second cup — and you find that you 
have gained some ground. It may be that tea is nearer 
the temperature of your body than a merely tepid 
drink ; it may be some divine virtue in the herb ; but 
you feel the second cup of tea settle within you. 
You feel yourself a degree less torrid, a shade more 
substantial. 

If you are wise you will rest content for the moment 
with this advantage. Order your pony and gallop an 
hour in the desert. You will sweat, of course; you 
need not expect to escape that at any time. But the 
sweat cools off you, and you ride in with a fresh skin. 
Take your tub in your tent : the Mle cools faster than 
the land, and oh the deliciousness of the cold water 
licking round you! 

Now comes the sweet revenge for all the torments 
of the day. It is quite dark by now, unless the moon be 
up, leaning to you out of a tender blue immensity, silver, 
caressing, cool. Or else the sprightly candles beckon 
from your dinner-table, spread outside the tent, a halo 
of light and white in the blackness, alert, inviting, 
cool. You, too, by now are clean and cool. You 
quite forget whether the day was more than warm 
or no. 

But you remember the thirst. You are cool, but 
within you are still dry, very dry and shrunken. Take 



THE MOMENT OF THE DAY. 203 

a long mug and think well what you will have poured 
into it ; for this is the moment of the day, the moment 
that pays for the Sudan. You are very thirsty, and 
you are about to slake your thirst. Let it be alcoholic, 
for you have exuded much life in the day ; let it above 
all be long. Whisky-and-soda is a friend that never 
fails you, but better still something tonic. Gin and 
soda ? Gin and lime-juice and soda ? Gin and bitters 
and lime-juice and soda? or else that triumphant 
blend of all whetting flavours, an Abu Hamed — ^gin, 
vermouth, Angostura, lime-juice, soda ? 

Mix it in due proportions ; put in especially plenty 
of soda — and then drink. For this is to drink indeed. 
The others were only flushing your body with liquid 
as you might flush a drain. But this ! This splashes 
round your throat, slides softly down your gullet till 
you feel it run out into your stomach. It spreads 
blessedly through body and spirit — not swirling 
through, like the'Atbara, but irrigating, like the Kile. 
It is soil in the sand, substance in the void, life in 
death. Your sap runs again, your biltong muscles 
take on elasticity, your mummy bones toughen. Your 
self has sprung up alive, and you almost think you 
know how it feels to rise from the dead. 

Thenceforward the Sudan is a sensuous paradise. 
There is nothing like that first drink after sunset, but 
you are only half irrigated yet: the first drink at 
dinner — yes, and the second and the culminating 
whisky-and-soda — can give rich moments. Then 



204 THE PATHOLOGY OF THIRST. 

your angareb stands ready, the sky is your bed- 
chamber, and the breath of the desert on your cheek 
is your good-night kiss. To-morrow you will begin to 
sweat again as you ride before breakfast. To-morrow 
— to-night even — there may be a dust-storm, and you 
will wake up with all your delicious moistness furred 
over by sand. But that is to-morrow. 

For to-night you have thirsted and you have drunk. 
And to-morrow will have an evening aim 



XXVI 

BY ROAD, EIVER, AND RAIL 

Gradually Fort Atbara transformed itself from an 
Egyptian camp to a British. 

Parts of the Fourth Egyptian Brigade came in from 
the north, but started south again almost immediately. 
The steamers which had taken up the blacks began 
to drop down to the Atbara ; as soon as they tied up, 
new battalions were packed into them, and they 
thudded up-river again. 

Of the four battalions of CoUinson Bey's command, 
the 1st left in detachments on August 8, and the first 
instalment of the 17th had preceded them on August 
7. Three companies of the 5th, with a company of 
camel corps, reached Berber from Suakim on August 
3 ; they had marched the 288 miles of desert in fifteen 
days. This was the record for marching troops, and 
it is not likely that anybody but Egyptians will ever 
lower it. One day, after a thirty-mile stage, the half- 
battalion arrived at a well and found it dry. The 
next was thirty miles farther. Straightway the men 



206 BY ROAD, RIVER, AND RAIL. 

got up and made their inarch sixty miles before they 
camped. They say that when, as here, native officers 
are in command of a desert march, they put most of 
their men on the baggage-camels : no doubt they do, 
but the great thing is that the troops get there. 

The 5th joined its other half in Berber and marched 
in to Fort Atbara on August 6 ; on August 7 it was 
packed into steamers and sent up to Wad Habashi. 
On August 9 arrived the first half of the newly-raised 
18th and two companies of the 17th. These had been 
pulling steamers and native boats up from Merawi; 
they too had broken a record, doing in twenty days 
what last year had taken twenty-six at the least and 
forty at the most. Among their steamers was the 
luckless Teb, which had run into a rock just before 
Dongola, and in '97 had turned turtle in the Fourth 
Cataract. The Sirdar had now taken the precaution 
of renaming her the Hafir. 

The four steamers had, of course, arrived days be- 
fore, and were already broken to harness. The gyassas 
were still behind, fighting with the prevailing south 
wind; between Abu Hamed and Abeidieh the trees 
on the bank were sunk under the flood, so that it was 
almost impossible to tow. One day the wind would 
be northerly, and that day the boats would sail forty 
miles ; the next it would be dead contrary, and, 
sweating from four in the morning to ten at night, 
they would make five. But it had to be done, and it 
was done. The first arrivals of the 17th and 18th 



THE CAMP BECOMES BRITISH. 207 

were picked up by train south of Abu Hamed; on 
August 11th and 13th the rest came in to find their 
comrades already gone. This completed the Fourth 
Brigade, and with its completion the whole strength 
of the Egyptian army was at the Atbara or forward. 

So that the camp became British. The two halvea 
of the Eifle Brigade, the first half of the Guards, and 
the 32nd Battery had come up on successive days; 
after that there was a lull. But on August 9 we had 
an exciting day — exciting, at least, by the standard of 
Fort Atbara. Late the night before had come the 
balance of the British artillery — the 37th Field Bat- 
tery, with six howitzers, a detachment of the 16th 
Company, Eastern Division, Garrison Artillery, with 
two 40-pounders, and a detachment of the Eoyal Irish 
Fusiliers, with four Maxims. 

They were getting the 40-pounders into position for 
shipment on the bank. All gunners are fine men, and 
garrison gunners are the finest men of all gunners ; 
these were pushing and pulling their ungainly dar- 
lings in the tire-deep sand as if they were a couple of 
perambulators. They are old guns, these 40-pounders ; 
their short barrels tell you that. They were in their 
second decade when they first came to Egypt in 1882, 
and, once in Khartum, they are like to spend the rest 
of their lives there. But for the present they were 
the heaviest guns with the force, and they must be 
nursed and cockered till they had knocked a hole or 
two in the Khalifa's wall. So the gunners had laid 



208 BY KOAD, RIVEK, AN» RAIL. 

out ropes, and now solid figures in grey flannel shirts, 
khaki trousers, and green -yellow putties — braces 
swinging from their waists, according to the ritual of 
cavalry and gunners and all men who tend beasts — 
were hammering away at their pegs and establishing 
their capstan with which the enormous babies were to 
be lowered into their boats. Before they breakfasted 
all was in order ; before they dined the guns were in 
the boats specially made to take them ; before they 
supped they were well on the waterway to Khartum. 

The Irish Fusiliers were picked from a fine regiment 
which had very hard luck in not being brought up in 
the Second Brigade. Set faces, heavy moustaches, 
necks like bulls, the score or so of men were the 
admiration of the whole camp. But most curiosity 
went naturally to the howitzers. They were hauling 
them out of the trucks when I got down — little tubby 
5-inch creatures, in jackets like a Maxim's, on car- 
riages like a field-gun's, carriage and gun-jacket alike 
painted pea-soup colour. The two trucks full of them 
were backed up to a Kttle sand platform; the gun- 
ners wheeled out gun and limber and limbered up ; a 
crowd of Egyptians seized hold, and — hallah hoh ! 
hallah hoh ! — they tugged away with them. The cry 
of the Egyptian when doing combined work is more 
like that of Brlinnhilde and her sisters in the " Wal- 
kiire" than any civilised noise I can remember to 
have heard. 

The howitzers were to fire a charge of lyddite whose 



ARRIVAL OF THE GUARDS. 209 

bursting power is equal to 80 lb. of gunpowder. 
With a very high trajectory the effect would be some- 
thing like that of bombs dropped from a balloon. 
Lyddite appears to be an impartial as well as an ener- 
getic explosive ; if you stand within 800 yards behind 
it, it is as like as not to throw back a bit of shell into 
your eye ; after which you will use no other. "When 
they tried it in Cairo at knocking down a wall, it did 
indeed knock down a good deal of it, but left a good 
deal standing. That, however, was because percussion 
fuses were used ; the delay fuses were all sent up the 
Nile. By delaying the explosion the smallest fraction 
of a second, till the shell has penetrated, its devilish- 
ness, they trusted, would be increased a hundredfold. 
This was lyddite's first appearance in war: we all 
looked forward to it with keen anticipation. The 
further forward I looked, personally, the better I 
should be pleased. 

On the afternoon of this same less-uneventful-than- 
usual 9th, a train snorted in with the second four 
companies of the Guards. The Guards paraded in 
their barrack square fill the beholder with admiration, 
tempered with a sense of his own un worthiness ; 
emerging from roofed trucks they were less imposing. 
Of course it was the worst possible moment to see 
them, and the impression formed was less good than 
that of other corps. Falling in beside the train they 
were certainly taller than the average British soldier, 
but hardly better built. They were mostly young, 

o 



210 BY EOAD, KIVER, AND RAIL. 

mostly pale or blotchy, and their back pads — did you 
know before that it was possible to get sunstroke in 
the spine? — were sticking out all over them at the 
grotesquest angles. Many of the officers wore thick 
blue goggles, and their back pads were a trifle restive 
too. The half -battalion marched limply. Only re- 
member that they had hardly stretched their legs since 
they embarked at Gibraltar just three weeks before. 
The wonder was that they could march at all. 

A very different show was that of the 10 th, when 
the first half of the Northumberland Fusiliers came 
in. To be sure, they appeared with advantages. The 
Guards' band played in three companies, and you 
do not know how a band drives out limpness until 
you have tried. But allowing for that, the 5 th still 
made a very fine entry. The men were not tall, but 
they were big round the chest, and averaged nearly 
six years' service. They swung up in a column of 
dust with their stride long, heads up, shoulders squared, 
soldierS all over. The officers were long-limbed, firmly 
knit, straight as lances. There are not many more 
pleasing sights in the world than the young British 
-subaltern marching alongside his company, his long 
legs moderating their stride to the pace of the laden 
men, his wide blue eyes looking steadily forward, 
curious of the untried future, confident in the tradi- 
tions of his service and his race. From the look of 
the 5th Fusiliers you might guess with safety that 



ONE MORE INCAENATION. 211 

the young soldier's confidence was not likely to be 
abashed. 

So that now the camp was all but English. A few 
Egyptians remained behind, indispensable for fatigues. 
But the Northumberland men were working away at 
their ammunition and baggage all the next morning, 
Tommy lugging at the camel's head-rope and adjuring 
him to " Come on, ol' man," and the old man, unac- 
customed to friendly language, only snarling the more 
devilishly and tipping his load on to the sand. But 
Tommy had his revenge when he rode back to the 
station for another load; the baggage -camel had to 
trot, which he had never done before except to escape 
being saddled. 

Englishmen working with camels, squads of shirt- 
sleeved Englishmen tramping to and fro on fatigues, 
Englishmen putting up hospital -tents, forty or fifty 
Englishmen with mild sun-fever in hospital, English 
bands, the crisp voice of the English sergeant, above 
all, silver-throated English bugles — reveille waking the 
dawn and last post floating up the silent night — Eort 
Atbara had seen one more incarnation. 



XXVII 

THE LAST OF FORT ATBAKA 

Thus at Fort Atbara we sat, and sat, and sat. When 
there were any troops to see, coming in or going out, 
we went to see them. When there were not, we 
galloped about in the desert, ate, drank, slept, and 
generally fulfilled the whole duty of correspondents. 
Why did you not make a dash for the front? the 
guileless editor will ask. But the modem war 
correspondent is not allowed to make unauthorised 
dashes, and the man who should commend the claims 
of hi^ newspaper by slapping a British General's face 
would righteously be shot. 

Besides, there was no front to speak of worth 
dashing for. The camp at Wad Habashi, we heard, 
had been encroached on by the ever-rising Nile, and 
it had been moved four miles up-stream to a spot 
in full view of the gorge of Shabluka. A Bimbashi 
of cavalry, who returned thence one day, pronounced 
the scenery finer than anything in Switzerland ; but 
then you must remember that since seeing Switzer- 



TWO SOFT BATTALIONS. 213 

land he had seen the desert railway and Berber and 
Fort Atbara and all the other dry dead levels of 
the blank Sudan. More practical was the news that 
as yet there had been only one storm of rain with 
thunder and lightning. At Fort Atbara we had 
cloudy days and rainy sunsets, whereas in the spring 
we had never seen anything but hard blue for 
weeks together. On the whole, too, it was cooler : 
115° in the shade on one or two clear afternoons, 
but often not so much as 100° all day. And the 
farther south you went, they said, the cooler it be- 
came. 

Indeed, the nearer we actually got to the beginning 
of operations, the softer task the expedition seemed. 
The only people who did not seem to find it so were 
the two battalions that had the softest task of all — 
the Eifles and the Guards. These came into hospital 
in dozens. Both regiments had a bad reputation 
for going sick — the Eifles because they are mostly 
cockneys without constitutions, the Guards because 
they are too much pampered. Anyhow, they de- 
veloped more sickness between them in a week than 
the whole of the First Brigade. Their failure to 
stand the sun and the dust-storms was not for want 
of officers' example — certainly in the Eifles, whose 
officers were keen sportsmen, riding out to stalk 
gazelle after lunch on the hottest afternoons. It was 
not for want of amusement, as amusement goes in 
standing camp, for the Eifles were alive with vocal 



214 THE LAST OF FORT ATBARA, 

talent. Almost every night, drifting down from their 
camp, you might hear the familiar chorale — 

Jolly good song, jolly well suBg, 
Jolly good comrades ev-ery one. 
If you can beat it you're welcome to try; 
Always remember the singer is dry. 
Soop! 

The Eifles were keeping their spirits up, and they 
were as smart and keen as you could wish. But they 
were not acclimatised, nor were the Guards, so that 
they sent nearly a hundred cases — mostly mild sun- 
fever — into hospital in a week. 

The first squadron of the 21st Lancers — they were 
travelling as three squadrons to be re-formed into four 
in the field — arrived on the 11th. The second half of 
the 5th Fusiliers came in on the 13th. Everything 
seemed strolling on satisfactorily and sleepily. Then 
suddenly the Sirdar aroused us with one of his light- 
ning lAovements. You will have formed an idea of 
the sort of man he is— all patience for a month, all 
swiftness when the day comes. The day came on 
August 13. At eleven I saw him, grave as always, 
gracious and courteous, volunteering facilities. At 
noon he was gone up the river to the front. 

The waiting, the sudden start, the caution that 
breathed no word of his intention, yet dictated an 
official explanation of his departure before he left — it 
was the Sirdar all over. And with his departure 



/ THE sirdar's idiosyncrasy. 216 

Fort Atbara took on yet another metempsycliosis. 
It became all at once the deserted base -camp, a 
caravanserai for reinforcements, a forwarding depot 
for stores. True, most of the staff remained — nobody 
pretending to know what had taken the Sirdar away 
so astonishingly, unless it was merely his idiosyncrasy 
of sudden and rapid movement. If anybody had 
been told any other reason, it was just the man or 
two that would not tell again. 

But curiosity is a tactless futility when you have 
to do with generals. It was enough that the advance 
had come with a rush. The detachments of the 17th 
and 18th Egyptian, sitting about on the bank till 
steamers arrived to let them complete the brigade, 
disappeared magically in the Sirdar's wake. With 
them went their Brigadier, CoUinson Bey. On that 
same evening the leading steamers passed up with 
parts of the First British Brigade from Darmali. 
Four days' voyage to below Shabluka and then they 
would come down in one day for the Second. Then 
we should be complete and ready for Omdurman. 

Meanwhile there was hardly a fighting man in Fort 
Atbara. The three battalions of the Second Brigade 
were in camp just south of it, on the Atbara. The 
first third of the Lancers were across the river ; the 
second came in on the afternoon of the 14th. It 
wanted only the third squadron and the Lancashire 
Fusiliers to complete the force. The cavalry was 
to start on the 16th with every kind of riding 



216 THE LAST OF lOKT ATBAKA. 

and baggage animal to march up, and the more 
able-bodied of the correspondents were going with 
them. 

So on the torrid Sunday morning of the 14th we 
filled the empty fort with a dress rehearsal of camels. 
In the Atbara campaign I had been part of a mess of 
three with nine camels : now it was a mess of four 
with twenty. We marched them all up solemnly 
after breakfast and computed how much of our multi- 
tudinous baggage would go on to them. Fourteen of 
them were hired camels: a hired camel is cheaper 
than a bought one, but it generally has smallpox, 
carries much less weight, and is a deal lengthier to 
load 

The twenty gurgling monstrosities sat themselves 
down on the sand and threw up their chins with the 
camel's ineffable affectation of elegance. The men cast 
a deliberate look round and remarked, " The baggage 
is much and the camels are few." Next they brought 
out rotten nets of rope and slung it round the boxes 
and sacks. That is to say, one man slung it round 
one box and the others stood statuesque about him 
and suggested difficulties. That done, the second man 
took up the wondrous tale, then the third, then the 
fourth. This took about two hours. Then they sug- 
gested that a camel could not without danger to its 
health carry more than two dozen of whisky, whereas 
anything worthy the name of a camel can carry four 
hundredweight Altogether they made some fifty 



PKEPARING FOR TAEDY VENGEANCE. 217 

camel - loads of the stuff. And when we said we 
wouldn't have it, all the men stood round and gabbled, 
and half the camels girned and gnashed their teeth, 
and the neighbouring donkeys lifted up their voices 
and brayed like souls in torment, and when you moved 
to repulse an importunate Arab you kicked a com- 
paratively innocent camel. Allah was their witness 
that the camels — which, when we hired them two 
days before, were very strong — were very weak. 

But little we cared. We were going up to Omdurman 
and Khartum. Camel -loads adjust themselves, but 
war and the Sirdar wait for nobody. We were march- 
ing into lands where few Englishmen had ever set 
heel, no Englishman for fifteen years. We were 
to be present at the tardy vengeance for a great 
humiliation. 



XXVIII 

THE DESERT MARCH TO OMDURMAN 

The column was to move out of camp at five in the 
morning. But at half-past, when our tardy caravan 
filed up to join it, dim bulks still heaved themselves 
up in the yellow smoke, half -sunrise, half-dust-cloud 
— masses of laden camels, strings of led horses pro- 
claiming that the clumsy tail of our convoy was still 
unwinding itself. Threading the patchy mimosa scrub, 
we came out into a stretch of open sand ; beyond 
it, striight, regular, ominous of civilisation, appeared 
the telegraph wire which crosses the Nile at Fort 
Atbara, and now ran on to beyond Metemmeh. 

In two black bars across the sand, as straight as 
the wire itself, the flat rays of sunrise shadowed the 
21st Lancers. Two travelling or nearly three cam- 
paigning squadrons, they were the first British cavalry 
in the Sudan since 1885. On their side it was their 
first appearance in war. They were relatively a young 
regiment, and the only one in the British army which 



A LECTURE IN CAVALBY. 219 

has never been on active service. You may imagine 
whether they were backward to come. 

To tell truth, at this first glimpse of British cav- 
alry in the field, they looked less like horsemen than 
Christmas-trees. The row of tilted lances, the swing 
of heavy men in the saddle when they moved, was 
war and chivalry. The rest was picketing pegs 
lashed to carbines, feeds of corn hanging from sad- 
dles, canvas buckets opposite them, waterproofs behind, 
bulky holsters in front, bundles of this thing and that 
dangling here and there, water-bottles in nets under 
the horses' bellies, khaki neck screens flapping from 
helmets, and blue gauze veils hooding helmets and 
heads and all. The smallest Syrian — they had left 
their own big hungry chargers in Cairo — had to carry 
18 stone; with a heavy man the weight was well 
over 20. 

But though each man carried a bazaar, the impres- 
sion of clumsiness lasted only a moment. 

When they moved they rode forward solidly yet 
briskly, — weighty and light at the same time, each 
man carrying all he wanted as behoves men going to 
live in an enemy's country. The sight was a better 
lecture in cavalry than many text-books. It is not 
the weapons that make the cavalryman you saw, but 
the mobility ; not the gallop, but the long, long walk ; 
not the lance he charges with, but the horse that 
carries him far and fast to see his enemy in front and 
screen his friends behind. So much if you wished to 



220 THE DESERT MARCH TO OMDURMAN. 

theorise ; if it was enough merely to look and listen, 
there was a fine piquancy in the great headpiece, the 
raking lance, all the swinging apparatus of the free- 
booter — and then, inside the casque, a round-faced 
English boy, and the reflection, " If I was to go and 
see my brother now, as keeps a brewery, it'd be just 
right." Masterpiece of under-statement, more telling 
than a score of superlatives — " just right ! " But we 
must not hurry on too fast. Before the cavalry were 
well observed, before even thirst became appealing, it 
was necessary to wait for the whole force — column, 
or convoy, or circus, or whatever is the technical name 
for it — to form up in the open. By degrees it did. 
Leading, the cavalry with its scouts and advanced 
guard and flanking parties. Then a line of tarbushes 
on grey horses — Egyptian gun-teams, and with them 
a couple of Maxims scoring the desert with the first 
ruts of all its immemorial years. Then a ragged line 
of khaki and helmets, of blue and crimson and gold 
and ^een turbans and embroidered waistcoats — the 
officers' chargers and transport mules of the two 
British brigades some with soldier-grooms, some with 
Berberi syces. Is not the waistcoat of the groom the 
same radiant marvel whether he be of Newmarket or 
Kalabsheh ? Likewise there were British Maxim 
mules and the miscellaneous donkeys of all the army. 
Lastly, lolloping their apathetic two and a half miles an 
hour, the baggage camels lumbered up the plain — well- 
furnished Government beasts, with new sound saddles 



THE NILE - METEMMEH TO KHARTUM 



Scale i:i;i^,ooo 



M'^i^ir -to OTnAirTruxriK, 
BojDts, TrtJixL ■Flat, -wttk. 




A NOAH'S AEE. 221 

and little sun-bonnet pads over forehead and pate; 
scraggier private camels with boxes of stores and 
green trunks and baths; starveling, hired camels 
banging whisky cases against their bare ribs. Add 
to all a few goats already trailing stiff legs behind 
them, a few sheep trampling their little flesh into 
whipcord, a drove of brindled bulls at the same task 
— and you have the caravan. 

Every four-footed beast that was to go to Khartum 
— saving only one -third of the 21st troop horses — 
must march with this convoy or not at all. Every 
man that went with it went simply as in charge of 
a beast; every man was supposed to ride, and the 
marches were cut out at nearly twenty miles a-day. 
Horses, mules, donkeys, sheep, goats, oxen, camels — 
the monstrous caravan sprawled over the desert, jost- 
ling and swaying and bumping, jerking off in dif- 
ferent directions at different rates, neighing and low- 
ing and braying and bleating and grunting, — Military 
Tournament, Lord Mayor's Show, Sanger's Circus, and 
Noah's Ark all jammed into one. Then the multitud- 
inous chaos straightened itself for a second, swayed, 
crooked itself again, and began to totter towards 
Khartum. 

We tottered for five hours through sparse camel- 
thorn, over ground mostly once flooded or once rained 
on, a sieve of lurking holes. By that time many 
thought we should be near the end of the thirteen miles 
which was our day's ration, and I, who had idiotically 



222 THE DESEET MAKCH TO OMDURMAN. 

started without breakfast, wished that I had never 
seen a horse or the Sudan or the light of day. At 
last, when it was getting on for one, the head of the 
column — by now a reeling ruin — turned Nileward. 
We shook up our horses and licked our split lips. 
Then we issued on to an old cotton-field — dry stalks, 
and between them the earth wrinkled with foot-deep 
cracks as close-grained as the back of your hand. 
The cracks were just big enough for a horse to break 
his leg in, and the islands between were just big 
enough to collapse into the cracks when a horse put 
his foot on them. Over this we crawled timidly till 
we came to a shallow yellow-ochre puddle. There 
we learned that this was our water, and the cracks 
were our camp. 

The cracks proved full of scorpions, and the respec- 
tive legs of your table or angareb inclined themselves 
at angles of 45° to the horizontal and to each other. 
However, we pretended we were at sea going home 
again, and consumed tinned spiced beef and peaches 
and beer — may I never want a meal more or deserve 
it less ! — and slept. The feature of next day's march 
was a new form of vegetation — a bush with leaves 
something like those of a canariensis, and really green, 
a phenomenon hitherto not met in the Sudan. And 
whether we marched twenty- two miles that day as 
was intended, or thirty-two as was asserted, or some- 
thing in between as was concluded, I do not know 
nor then cared: at eight I had called up a camel, 



THE VAGARIES OF THE NILE. 223 

and breakfasted on tinned spiced beef and peaches 
and beer. 

But the important point that emerged was this : the 
unusually high and ever-rising Nile flood was playing 
the very deuce with us. The river was pushing up 
what they call " khors " — broad, shallow depressions 
which look like tributaries, only whose water runs 
the wrong way. These planted themselves across the 
track, and we had to fetch circuits round them. This 
second day we arrived at a second puddle, which was 
a second khor, and watered there. But the distressing 
point in the situation was that the force was to draw 
rations and forage every second day from depots on 
the bank. This was the second day, and the depot 
was duly on the bank ; only the khor had flooded up 
in between. The Lancers had watered their horses, 
and fed them — and then they had to saddle up at four 
or so, and file off round the khor three miles to get 
their rations. Some of the mules had not yet come 
in; without even ofif- saddling they had to follow; 
which made a march of nearly twelve hours on end. 

You could not blame anybody for the vagaries of 
the Nile, but it was natural that somebody would 
suffer from them. Already at the first halting-place 
four Egyptians carried in a comrade in a blanket with 
a rude splint on his leg. The same day a trooper of 
the Lancers went down. He had been advised not to 
try the Sudan sun at all, but insisted on his chance 
of service : after this first march he just got his 



224 THE DESSET MARCH TO OMDUKMAN. 

horse watered and fed, and then dropped insensible 
with sunstroke. He was but just conscious next 
morning. Four Egyptian gunners carried him on an 
upturned angareb to Kitiab, the second halting-place. 
Here he was left with others. Next day and the 
next there were others. 

The horses, too, suffered. Those of the squadron 
which came up first, and the horses from Darmaii 
and Essillem, stood the marching almost perfectly. 
Those which had started to tramp the morning after 
the rail-river journey went down with fever in the 
feet. Twelve days' standing had sent all the blood to 
their feet ; the red-hot sand did the rest. 

We left a dozen on the shore at Kitiab to be picked 
up by a passing boat, if so it might befall. The third 
day we marched on through a park-like country, thick 
with tall, spreading, almost green mimosa-trees ; in 
one place, where a khor lapped up, if sand were grass 
you might almost have cried " The Serpentine." "We 
camped at a ruined village on a sandhill — name un- 
known and uncared — and for the first time saw the 
Nile, which we were supposed to be drinking. He 
was lying at the far end of a three-mile tangle of 
bush. The fourth day, guided by the brown- faced 
cliffs on his farther bank, we came down on the 
pleasantest camp I had yet seen on Nile or Atbara — 
Magawieh. There was no village but mud ruins ; but 
there were clusters and groves of real palms — date- 
palms with yellow and scarlet clusters of ripe fruit. 



THE EBTUItN OF THE NATIVE. 225 

We sat down on the very lip of the river, which came 
up flush with the grass bank, like a full tide. And 
there, on August 20, we halted to rest the horses. 
Half-a-dozen were sent down with fever in the feet ; 
also a few soldiers, some bad, some not so bad as they 
said. The rest of us were very hard and sound by 
now, with the skin well peeled off our noses. 

By now we had marched about halfway to Wad 
Habashi. And of population we had seen hardly a 
Goul. Euined villages we passed in plenty — so far 
back from the river that they must have lived from 
wells. Now, since Mahmud killed out the Jaalin, they 
did not live at all. We found evidences of some poor 
prosperity — the dry runnels of old irrigation, the little 
chequers of old fields, old, round, mud granaries, old 
crackling zaribas, old houses rocking on their mud 
foundations, old bones white in the sun. All the rest 
was killed out by the despot we were marching to try 
to kill. The fighting force of the Jaalin was ahead 
of us on the same errand, and with two more motives 
—revenge and loot. Behind us straggled the return- 
ing families— one man with a spear, a bevy of plum- 
bloom girls and old women and infants on donkeys, 
a goat or two for sole sustenance. They were re- 
turning; their ruins were their own again. 



XXIX 



METEMMEH 



" Gk)OM I " The hideous cry broke on to the night, 
and jarred on the white stars. " Mohammed ! Ali ! 
Hassan ! Goom, goom ! " I sat up on my angareb and 
groaned. Do not be frightened ; " goom " is not the 
cry of a beast of prey. It is worse ; it is the Arabic 
for "Wake," and it was three in the morning. We 
were moving out of our pleasant palm - shade at 
Magawieh on August 21, and taking the road south 
again. 

The clumsy column formed up after its clumsy 
wont, and threaded sleepily desertward through the 
mimosa-thorns. After a few minutes we came, to our 
wonder, on to a broad flat road embanked at each side. 
It could hardly have been built by scorpions, and there 
were no other visible inhabitants. Then, at a corner, 
we came to a sign-post — a sign-post, by all that's 
astounding — with "To Metemmeh" inscribed there- 
on. We learned afterwards that the fertile-minded 
Hickman Bey, finding himself and his battalion 



THE MASSAGES Of THE JAALIN. 227 

woodcutting in the neighbourhood, had used up 
some of his spare energy and of his men's spare 
muscle in making the road and setting up the sign, 
the only one in the Sudan. At the time the thing 
was like meeting an old friend after a long parting, 
and the caravan set out at least half a mile an hour 
the better for it. 

We trudged through the sand and scrub for the best 
part of five hours. Then suddenly it sank and died 
away. We had noticed already more than the usual 
number of mummied camels and donkeys by the road- 
side. The sun had tanned the skin and bleached the 
bones ; hawks and vultures had seen to the rest ; they 
might have been lying there days or years. The 
camels lay with their heads writhed back till the 
ears brushed the hump, the attitude in which a 
camel always dies. But all the donkeys had their 
throats cut — and that told us we were reaching 
Metemmeh. 

Last year, about this time or a little earlier, the 
main force of the Egyptian army lay at Merawi, 
preparing to advance on Abu Hamed. The Khalifa 
ordered the Jaalin to advance against it ; but the 
Jaalin had been in the fore -front of every dervish 
disaster since Abu Klea, and they sent secretly to 
the Sirdar for arms. But it was too late, and 
Mahmud fell upon the Jaalin as Hunter fell upon 
Abu Hamed. They fought hard, but Mahmud had 
too many rifles for them. Metemmeh was made 



228 METEMMSH. 

even as Khartum and old Berber ; the branch of 
Jaalin whose headquarters were Metemmeh was 
blotted out of existence. The carcasses we saw were 
the beasts that had dropped or been overtaken in 
their flight. 

The scrub sank and died away. We came on to a 
bare level of old cultivated land, sparsely dotted with 
dry twigs, seamed with rents and holes, and covered 
thick with bones. Bones, skulls, and hides of camels, 
oxen, horses, asses, sheep, goats — the place was car- 
peted with them, a very Golgotha. A sickening smell 
came into the air, a smell heavy with blood and fat. 
We off-saddled at a solitary clump of tall palms on the 
bank, turned round, and across a mile of treeless desola- 
tion saw a forlorn line of black mud wall. The look 
of the wall alone was somehow enough to tell you 
there was nobody inside. That was the corpse of 
Metemmeh. 

Before we went in we looked at the forts and 
trenches with which they had lined the bank against 
the gunboats. It was to be presumed that they had 
done the same at Omdurman, so we looked at them 
out of more than idle curiosity. They were rude 
enough, to be sure. Circular, of some 120 feet radius, 
the forts were mud emplacements for a single gun with 
three embrasures looking to front, half right and half 
left; the guns — captured since at the Atbara — could 
only be fired as they bore on a boat in line with one of 
these. Yet, rough and crumbling as they were, it was 



mahmud's camp. 229 

plain that the boats' fire had done them Kttle harm. 
The embrasures were chipped about a good deal, 
and with very accurate shooting anybody trying to 
serve the guns would probably have gone down. 
But the mud work could shelter any man who 
sat close enough under it, and common shell or even 
shrapnel would do him little harm. The trenches 
were not wholly contemptible either — deep and with 
traverses. 

The next thing was to ride over to Mahmud's old 
camp. He had placed it behind the ridge on which 
Metemmeh stands, in the open desert and out of 
range, as he thought, of the boats; the time-fuse of 
a 12|-pounder shell, picked up in the very centre of 
the camp, seemed to suggest a subsequent disillusion- 
ment. As you rode up you first saw nothing but four 
mud huts. Then the soil looked redder than that of 
the desert behind it ; presently you saw that it had 
been turned up in shallow heaps; the place looked 
like a native cemetery. And when we got a little 
nearer we found that this was his fortified camp. One 
of the huts appeared to have been his dwelling-house ; 
another was a sort of casemate — mud walls 4 feet 
thick and an arrangement of logs that looked as if it 
had been meant as a stockade to shield riflemen. 
But the rest of the position was merely childish — as 
planless as his zariba on the Atbara, without any of 
its difficulties. It was just a number of shelter- 
trenches scattered anyhow over the open sand. Some 



230 METEMMEH. 

could have held twenty men, some two. They must 
have spread over nearly a square mile, but they were 
quite rare and discontinuous ; in the circle of the camp 
there was about twice as much firm ground as trench. 
Add that the whole could have been shelled from the 
Metemmeh ridge at half a mile or so, and that you 
could thence have seen almost every man in the place 
— well, if Omdurman was to be no harder nut than 
this 

Now turn back to Metemmeh — poor, blind-walled, 
dead Metemmeh. And first, between camp and town, 
stand a couple of crutched uprights and a cross-bar. 
You wonder what, for a moment, and then wonder 
that you wondered. A gallows ! At the foot of it a 
few strands of the brown palm -fibre rope they use 
in this country, and one, two, four, six, eight human 
jaw-bones. Just the jaw - bones, and again you 
wonder why ; till you remember the story that when 
Sheikh Ibrahim, of the Jaalin, came here a week 
or two ago he found eight skulls under the gallows 
in a rope - netting bag. When he took them up 
for burial the lower jaws dropped off, a,nd lie here 
still. 

If the jaws could wag in speech again — but we must 
try not to be sentimental. If we are, we shall hardly 
stand the inside of Metemmeh. So blank and piteous 
and empty is the husk of it. These are not mere mud 
hovels, but town houses as the Sudan understands 
houses^ — mud, certainly, but large, lofty rooms with 



STILLNESS AND STENCH. 231 

wide window-holes and what once were matting roofs. 
Two that I went into were even double-storied ; no 
stairs, of course, but a sort of mud inclined plane 
outside the walls leading to the upper rooms. Another 
house had a broad mud-bank forming a divan round 
its chief room. Now the beams were cracked and 
broken, and the divan had been rained on through 
the broken roof ; shreds of what once may have 
been hangings were dangling limply in the breeze. 
At the gateway of this house — once an arch, now 
a tumble of dry mud — was a black handful of a 
woman's hair. 

In every courtyard you see the miserable emblems 
of panic and massacre. Eide through the gate — there 
lies a calabash tossed aside; a soiled, red, peak-toed 
slipper dropped from the foot that durst not stop to 
pick it up again ; the broken sticks and decayed cords 
of a new angareb that the butchers smashed because 
it was not worth taking away. And in every court- 
yard you see great patches of black ashes spreading 
up the wall. Those monuments are recent ; they are 
the places where, only days ago, they burned the 
bones of the Jaalin. The dead camels and donkeys 
lie there yet, across every lane, dry, but still stinking. 
A parrot-beaked hairy tarantula scrambles across the 
path, a lizard's tail slides deeper into a hole; that 
is all the life of Metemmeh. Everything steeped in 
the shadeless sun, everything dry and silent, silent. 
The stillness and the stench merge together and soak 



232 METEMMEH. 

into your soul, exuding from every foot of this melan- 
choly graveyard ~ the cenotaph of a whole tribe, 
fifteen years of the Sudan's history read in an hour. 
Sun, squalor, stink, and blood : that is Mahdism. 

Press your bridle on the drooping pony's neck; 
turn and ride back to the river, the palms, and thg 
lances. God send he stays to fight iia> 



XXX 

A correspondent's diary 

Wad ffamed, Aug. 22. — The concentration of tiM 
force here is all but complete. 

The British regiments have all arrived, whole or 
in part, with the exception of the Rifles and the 
21st Lancers, of whom two squadrons are marching 
by the road. They are expected at mid -day to- 
morrow. 

With almost the full strength of the Egyptian 
army added, the force is the largest ever seen in 
the Sudan, the composition of every arm being at 
least half as strong again as at the Atbara. 

The cavalry and the convoy are going very well 
now. The beasts and men are hardened by marching, 
which is an invaluable training. We came twenty- 
five miles to-day in one march without effort. 

Wad Ramed, Av^. 23. — The camp here is both 
compact and commodious. Thoiigh there are but 
little short of 20.000 men, in a zareba barely more 



234 A corrbspondbnt's diaet. 

than a mile long, nobody is crowded, and everywhere 
there is easy access to water. 

The blacks are encamped at the south end in ter- 
races of straw huts; next are the Egyptians under 
shelters extemporised from their blankets; at the 
north end the British are installed in tents. Their 
quarters are far more comfortable than at Atbara, 
though officers and men have to sleep in their boots 
for the sake of practice. 

There is but little shade from the trees, but the 
camp is covered with tufts of coarse yellow grass, 
which keep down the dust. 

The steamers lying along the shore, the guns, horses, 
mules, and camels, the bugle-calls, and the cries in 
English and Arabic, make up a little world full of 
life in the desert. 

The concentration will not actually be effected here 
as General Hunter, with two Egyptian brigades, will 
march to-morrow to Hajir at the head of the Shab- 
luka cataract, where there will be a new concentra- 
tion within a few days. He will be followed in the 
evening by his other two brigades, which will march 
to various points up the river, and cut wood for the 
steamers ascending the rapids. 

The Lancers will arrive here this evening, and the 
Eifles will come probably by boat early to-morrow. 
The force will then be complete. There was an im- 
posing parade of the forces here this morning. The 
Ist, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Egyptian Brigades and the 



A SUDAN STOKM. 235 

2nd and 1st British Brigades paraded in the above 
order, counting from the right. The force advanced 
in columns of companies, then turned half-right on 
the extreme right brigade. It was difficult to get 
a full impression of the manoeuvres in consequence 
of the dust. 

News from Omdurman is abundant, and recon- 
naissances show that the top of the Shabluka cat- 
aract is definitely abandoned. It is rumoured that 
the Khalifa intends to meet our force in the open; 
but this story, as the story of the blowing-up of the 
Khalifa's steamer in an attempt to lay a mine, must 
be taken with the greatest caution. The Khalifa 
probably does not know his own intentions yet. 

The Egyptian troops and the seasoned British bri- 
gade are in splendid condition. The 2nd British 
Brigade is naturally not so inured to the climate. 
Everybody is straining on the tiptoe of expectation. 

Wad Hamed, Aug. ^^ (4 2^-in.) — Last night brought 
us the best storm of the season. 

It began, as its way is, savagely and without a 
second's warning. 

A flicker of silver lightning, a bloated drop of rain, 
then the wind rushed down snorting and tearing at 
the tent-ropes like an angry stallion. 

It tore up the tents, and left them flapping in 
agony, while the rain came down and completed the 
conquest by drenching our kits at its leisure. 



236 ▲ cokkespondent's diakt. 

What was worse, the gyassa, laden with stores and 
spare kits, belonging to an Egyptian battalion which 
was just about to start forward, was blown clean 
over, and everything shot into the river. 

At daylight you could see the disconsolate fatigue- 
party, which was left behind to tow the gyassa, 
wearily salvaging, with chocolate legs naked be- 
low the waist, but with irreproachable uniform 
above. 

The lightning flared and the wind bombarded us 
till the morning, when we reaped one consolation — 
the dust was all gone, except that whiph had formed 
layers on our faces. 

The morning was grey, gusty, and nipping; it 
might have been a summer morning at home. 

General Hunter left this morning at daybreak, with 
the 1st and 3rd Egyptian Brigades, for Hajir, a two 
days' march for them. 

Th^e 2nd and 4th Brigades followed this after- 
noon. 

If the rain had soaked their kits, at least it a£forded 
cool, clean going. 

The baggage of the Egyptian Infantry started in 
gyassas up the Sixth Cataract early this morning. 

The second half of the Eifles and the Irish Fusi- 
liers' Maxim detachment arrived during the night, 
completing the British division. 

The cavalry and guns will leave to-morrow, the 
forty-pounders and the howitzers going by water. 



THE DESERTED CAMP. 237 

The staff will follow, and then, as the Sirdar says, 
''We shall be in the straight." 

Wad Hamed, Aug. 25 {2 p.m.) — Rumours from 
Omdurman continue to add vastly to the eager curi- 
osity wherewith we advance to lift the veil from 
Khartum. 

A trustworthy report asserts that Ali Wad Helu, 
the Mahdi's second Khalifa and titular heir to the 
present ruler, has fallen from his horse while drilling 
the dervish cavalry, and suffered severe injuries. 

This, if true, presumably delights the Khalifa, who 
is jealous of Helu, but will tend to discourage the 
superstitious Sudanese, who hold that a fall from a 
horse when entering on an enterprise is the worst of 
omens. 

Yesterday morning this camp was the most popu- 
lous centre in the Sudan after Omdurman. This 
afternoon it is all but raw scrub again. 

Out of the tangle of yellow halfa-grass the Sirdar's 
tent rises like an island, and except for the head- 
quarters and the artillery and cavalry in the extreme 
north, the camp is completely deserted. 

The Egyptian infantry division, which left yesterday 
morning, should reach Hajir — officially called Gebel 
Roy an — to-day. 

The 2nd British Brigade left here at daybreak this 
morning, and the 1st follows this afternoon. 

The Rifles are remaining with detachments of other 



238 A coreespondent's diabt. 

battalions delayed on the journey up ; they will prob- 
ably proceed to Gebel Eoyan by boat, doing the dis- 
tance in one day instead of two. 

Perhaps even more striking than the disappearance 
of the troops is the diminution of the vast accumula- 
tion of supplies and stores. 

The little town of cases and sacks has had street 
after street lifted away and sent up to Shabluka. 

Seeing the process thus in miniature, we can ap- 
proach an adequate idea of the labour, promptness, and 
system which brought all the necessaries for 25,000 
men from Atbara, Merawi, Haifa, Egypt, and England 
without a break or hitch. 

Last night the whole upward course of the river 
was fringed with the taper spars of the gyassas, and 
festooned with the smoke from the camp-fires of the 
towing-parties. 

Everything has gone on in proper time and proper 
order, and the weight of the material shifted is 
enormous. 

Multiply all this a hundredfold, and you appreciate 
the standing miracle of Egyptian transport. 

Wad Earned, Aug. 25 (6 p.m.) — The march out of 
the 1st British Brigade this afternoon was a most 
imposing spectacle. 

The four battalions had all their baggage packed to 
the minute, and at the sound of the bugle moved off 
and took the road in four parallel columns. 



A MAGNIFICENT BRIGADE. 239 

The "Warwicks were on the left; next to them 
the Seaforths, then the Camerons, and on the right 
the Lincolns — the three last carrying battalion 
flags, a new element of colour since the Atbara 
campaign. 

The ground just outside the camp was broken, but 
the men struck along with an easy swing from the 
loins, ignoring the weight of their kits. 

Many of the men were bearded, and all were 
tanned by the sun, acclimatised by a summer in the 
country, hardened by perpetual labours, and con- 
fident from the recollection of victory — a magnifi- 
cent force, which any man mignt be proud to 
accompany into the field. 

Wad Hamed, Aug. 26 {II.4S a.m.) — The camp 
this morning shows even an emptier desolation than 
yesterday. 

At the north end the Lancers are disembarking 
their last horses, preparatory to the march to Hajir 
to-morrow, the gunners are readying the 40 -pounders 
and howitzers for the steam-up to-day, the rest of 
the artillery marches. 

The medical staff is just leaving, having sent the 
sick down to Nasri yesterday. 

The rest of the camp is a wilderness of broken 
biscuit-boxes and battered jam-tins, dotted with the 
half -naked Jaalin scallywags, male and female, once 
the richest slave-dealers in the Sudan, now glad to 



240 A COEEESPONDENT'S DIAET. 

collect etnpty bottles and winnow the dust for broken 
biscuit. 

With the departure of headquarters to - morrow 
the whole force will have shifted camp to Hajir. 

Thence it is under forty miles to Omdurman. 

For the first half of the distance the bank is flat 
with cultivation. 

On nearing Kerreri, the ground becomes broken 
with thick low thorn scrub. 

Thence to Omdurman rises a cluster of sandstone 
hills inland, 300 feet to 500 feet high. 

In the present state of the Nile the river forms 
numerous khors, or small tributaries, flowing out 
instead of into the river, and many such on approach- 
ing Omdurman will perhaps necessitate detours on the 
line of march. 

To the north-west of the town there is rising ground 
which is said to ofifer a favourable artillery position. 

Wad Hamed, Aug. B6 (2.40 p.m.) — Major Stuart- 
Wortley, who went up to Khartum two days after 
Gordon's death, leaves to-night by the right bank with 
the friendlies, Jaalin and other tribes. 

They will advance parallel with the Sirdar. 

It is reported that a dervish force is on the right 
bank, under the Emirs Zeki and Wad Bishara. 

A few dervish scouts are reported on this bank, 
near Gebel Eoyan, opposite our new camp and depot 
also patrols on the left bank. 



THE KHALITA'S BLUNDER. 241 

The Khalifa hlundered heavily when he abandoned 
the Shabluka rapids, as even a small force among the 
rocks might have been troublesome, whereas now the 
Sirdar has been able to convey all his transport to the 
open water above without pause. 

Oebel Royan, Aug. S8 {8.5 a.m.) — We are now 
within four marches of Khartum. From the brown 
shoulder of Eoyan mountain, which overlooks and 
gives its name to the camp, you can see long stretches 
of green - lipped desert, blinking in the sun, and 
cutting the blue ribbon of open water to Omdur- 
man. 

In the distance hangs a white speck of haze, which 
may be the Mahdi's tomb. 

Yesterday I came up with the main force. 

This morning it has gone forward again, and the 
four marches are becoming three. 

General Hunter, with the Egyptian Division, began 
to move out before sunrise, and as I write — eight 
o'clock — their last drums are throbbing faintly in the 
distance. 

The Egyptian cavalry, horse battery, camel corps, 
and galloping Maxims had preceded them before 
dawn. 

Cavalry contact with the dervishes haa been pos- 
sible at any moment since Friday. 

The patrols saw a few dervish horse, who, however, 
fell back rapidly, lighting alarm beacons. 

Q 



242 A coeeespondent's diaey. 

Spies and deserters report that the advanced dervish 
force is near Kerreri, but it is impossible to tell at 
present if this be so. 

Hitherto the Dervishes have made no attempt to 
raid convoys or to alarm the camp by night ; they are 
simply falling back on the main positions. 

Everybody observes that the farther you advance 
into their country, the more desirable, or father the 
less undesirable, it becomes. 

I marched here from Wad Hamed, so I cannot 
depict fully the beauties of the Shabluka cataract, 
but I have seen enough from above and below and 
from various points of the road to understand how 
grateful it is to eyes seared with burning plains. 

The rapids are gemmed with green wooded islands 
and waist-high bush grass, and the rocky heights on 
either side are bathed in violet by the morning and 
evening lights. 

At the gorge the cliffs close in, and the river nar- 
rows* from 2000 to 200 yards. 

Here are dervish forts, three on the left bank and 
one on the right. 

They are now flush with the water, which is actually 
running into the embrasures. 

Having had to march with the artillery, I had to 
content myself with the beauties of the Maxim-Nor- 
denfeldt gun. 

The Egyptian field artillery you can either draw 
with two mules or take the pieces and carry them on 



A GUNBOAT LOST. 243 

four — a vast advantage, as shown on yesterday's march, 
which was an alternation of stones and wallowing 
sand. 

On entering the camp I came on the tail of the 
British Division, which had made four marches of 
twenty miles. 

The Egyptians took two, but the going is exception- 
ally bad ; natives and British alike fell out somewhat 
freely. 

The massed black bands welcomed the British, thun- 
dering out the march past of each of the regiments. 

The Eifles, though soft, were commended for 
smartness in marching, as were the Northumberland 
Fusiliers. 

The flood has formed a khor across the original 
camp, and the British are in detached zariba to the 
southward, which is lined nightly with a living ram- 
part of soldiers, alert, eager, and tingling in anticipa- 
tion of a fight. 

Gehel Boyan, Aug. 28 {12£0 ^.w.)— The " Zafir," the 
flagship of the gunboat flotilla. Captain Keppel, with 
General Bundle, chief of the staff, on board, sprang a 
leak the day before yesterday off Shendi. 

The boat was headed for the shore, but sank within 
a few yards of the bank. 

Only her funnel and mast are above water. 

The barges in tow were cut adrift, and everybody 
behaved with the greatest coolness. 



244 A correspondent's diary. 

Captain Keppel was the last man to leave. 

All lives were saved, but a quantity of kit was 
lost. 

Considering that the navy has been two years at 
work, that the steamers are of light draught, and that 
there is a tremendous head of water in the river, it 
is wonderful that this is the first serious mishap. 

Everybody sympathises with Captain Keppel, and 
deplores this stroke of bad luck at the end of months 
of splendid work. 

He transfers his flag to the Sultan. 

The whole force advances this afternoon about 
eight miles. 

Wddy Abid, Aug. S9 (840 a.m.) — ^The whole army 
is camped here, the British division having left 
Eoyan in the cool of the evening and marching in 
by moonlight. 

The camp is estimated to be twenty-eight miles 
frona Omdurman and eighteen from Kerreri, where 
there is every reason to believe that the Dervishes 
are collecting. 

The army will halt here at least till evening. 

Meanwhile a reconnaissance, consisting of the 
Egyptian cavalry, with the Maxims and camel corps, 
is patrolling ten miles to the southward, and a gun- 
boat has been despatched to patrol the stream. 

A dervish patrol of ten men was seen yesterday 
evening. It fell back. 



ANOTHEB STOBM. 246 

Deserters are now beginning to arrive in swarms, 
and a sifting of their reports shows that it may be 
considered certain that the Dervishes mean to fight. 

The weather till now has been magnificent, and 
beyond the most optimistic expectations. 

The heat is now extreme in the daytime, but the 
nights are cool and dry. 

This morning was overcast, and there were furious 
gusts of wind from the north-east, which are supposed 
to be precursors of rain. 

So far we have had only three rainstorms. 

Violent and tempestuous weather at this stage might 
breed discomfort but not delay. 

The correspondents would find the chief disadvan- 
tage of rain in the possible interruption of the field 
telegraph, which has been brought here, and will prob- 
ably advance farther, though it is only poled as far as 
Nasri Island, and wet ground might cause a break- 
down of communications. 

10.16 a.m. — The reconnaissance has returned, hav- 
ing seen only a few fresh tracks of dervish horsemen, 
owing to the dust blown off the alluvial land into the 
desert having covered up their traces. 

The fewness of the tracks confirms the conjecture 
that the Dervishes have resolved to retire to ground 
of their own choosing. 

The cloudy morning turned to the opaquest dust- 
storm of recent experience. 



246 A correspondent's diary. 

The rushing south wind swishes through the camp, 
whirling the dust of the old cultivation in yellow 
clouds before it, and the desert outside the zariba 
forms a half-solid curtain of flying earth. 

Eiding round the camp to-day, the dust of which 
clung to my eyelashes and formed dangling screens 
of accumulated Sudan before my eyes, I was much 
struck by the advantage which experience in cam- 
paigning here gives the Egyptian over the British 
troops. 

All alike are under blanket shelters, but the 
Egyptians rig up all the blankets of one company 
into a continuous shed on high poles, which gives an 
airy shelter, leaves the camping-ground clearer, and 
economises blankets, so that enough are left to hap 
round the rifles. 

The British, contrariwise, fix one or two blankets 
on low sticks, and their ground is less thoroughly 
cleared of scrub to begin with. 

Dotted promiscuously over the ground are tiny 
booths, beneath which the men swelter, with the 
back flaps of their helmets turned over their faces 
to screen off the sun. Even through the veil of 
dust he presses on to the blanket so close that the 
men cannot uncover their heads. 

This is not a white man's country. 

1.15 p.m. — There is abundant evidence that the spot 
where we are now camped was in the recent occupa- 



KHARTUM AND OMDURMAN 




of eheSetihab ^ 

Arabs 



THE MAZES OF THE AEAB MIND. 247 

tion of the enemy — angarebs and women's trinket- 
boxes being littered all over the place. 

The Dervishes are almost certainly falling back be- 
fore us on to positions determined beforehand, where 
they expect advantage from scrub, and it would be no 
surprise here if a decisive battle were fought some 
distance north of Omdurman. 

The Intelligence Department naturally keeps its own 
counsel, since a daily interchange of spies between the 
hostile headquarters is now easy. 

It is safe to say that all the advantage of informa- 
tion is on our side, all the stories of the deserters being 
carefully sifted by men accustomed to thread the tor- 
tuous mazes of the Arab mind. 

The Intelligence Department camp is to-day strewn 
with plum-coloured, thin-cheeked dervishes squatting 
in groups on the ground munching biscuit, the first 
earnest of the renewed blessings of civilised rule. 

It must not, however, be inferred from this that 
the Khalifa's trusted fighting men are deserting. 

These are so detested on account of half a gen- 
eration of barbarities that they know there is no 
asylum left them in all Africa : they will die 
resolutely. 

Wady Alid, Aug. 30 {9.^0 a.m.) — "We are again on 
the march, the army advancing ten miles to Sayal — 
another stride towards Omdurman. 

Major Stuart -Wortley's friendlies have captured 



248 A coebespondent's diakt. 

five prisoners, together with a barge laden with grain, 
after a brush with some dervishes on the right bank 
of the Nile. 

During the storm which continues to rage here 
the British outposts last night heard the patter of 
hoofs, and suddenly a dervish horseman rode up, 
shouting "Allah I" and hurled his spear over their 
heads; then, wheeling round, he galloped aw&y 



THE RECONNAISSANCES 

KiTEiLLE at four had forestalled daybreak ; at five we 
were between dawn and sunrise. Inside the swarming 
zariba of camp Sayal impatient bugles were hurrying 
whites and blacks under arms. Outside it the desert 
dust threw up a sooty film before the yellow east ; the 
cavalry and camel -corps were forming up for the 
day's reconnaissance. Four squadrons of British 
21st Lancers on the left, nine squadrons of Egyptian 
horsemen on the right with the horse guns, they 
trotted jangling into broad columns of troops, and 
spread fan-wise over the desert. 

The camel-corps stayed a moment to practise a bit 
of drill of their own. One moment they were a huge 
oblong phalanx of waving necks and riders silhouetted 
against the sunrise ; & couple of words in Turkish 
from their Bey and the necks were waving alone with 
the riders in a square round them ; an instant more 
and camels and men had all knelt down. The camel- 
corps was a flat field of heads and humps hedged with 



250 THE BECOimAISSANCEIk 

a shining quickset of bayonets. That rehearsed, they 
loped away to the extreme right : they can wait longer 
for their water than the horses, so that their portion is 
always the outer desert. 

One instant we were with the main army by the 
zariba. The next — so it seemed after a few days of 
marching with the infantry- -we were off and clear 
away. The screen was spread far out before the 
toiling infantry, and the enemy who would harass 
or even look at them must slip through us or break 
us if he could. It looked little enough like either. 
As soon as our scouts were off the country was full 
of them. 

It was the last day of August — above a month since 
the first battalions had left the Atbara, two days 
before we were to take Omdurman, and the first shot 
of the campaign was yet unfired. But before us rose 
cliff-like from the river, and sloped gently down to the 
plain, the outline of Seg-el-Taib hill ; from that were 
only a dozen miles to Kerreri; from Kerreri were 
only ten to Omdurman. From the hill we should 
surely see. 

So hoofs pattered, and curb-chains jingled, and stir- 
rups rang, and behold we were round the inland base of 
Seg-el-Taib and scrambling up its shaly rise. From the 
top we looked out at the ten-mile reach of river and the 
hundred-mile stretch of plain, rejoicing in the young 
sunlight. On our left, four gunboats — ^two white of 



DBKYISHES AT LAST! 251 

the new class, two black of the old — trudged deviously, 
slowly, surely up under the right bank. Across 
the shining steel ribbon of Nile lay a vast tangle of 
green — only a fifth funnel and Maxim-platforms crawl- 
ing along its horizon revealed it an island. On our 
right, the brilliant mimosa-scrub — in this rainy coun- 
try mimosa grows real leaves and the leaves are green 
— stretched forward to a dim double hill, a saddle in 
the middle, gentle ridges dipping down at each end to 
river and desert. At our feet, round a sandy creek, 
clustered white and brown cavalry like bees, lances 
planted in the sand, men bent over bits, horses down 
on their knees for the water. In the desert a slowly 
advancing lozenge under a cloud of dust stood for the 
camel corps. Over our shoulders a black tide licked 
yet more slowly southward; that was infantry and 
guns. Sun, river, birds, green; grim, stealthy gun- 
boats and that awfully advancing host ; it combined 
into the most heart-winning, most heart-quaking pic- 
ture of all the war. 

But we were looking for somebody to kill. Mud- 
walled villages, as everywhere, fringed the river-bank ; 
by one the cavalry were watering ; another further on 
focussed the landscape with the conical-pointed tomb 
of some sheikh or holy man. And — what ? — the 
glasses, quick ! — yes, by George it is ! One, two, 
three, four, five — our scouts ? impossible ; there are 
our scouts a mile this side of them. No : Dervishes — 



252 THE SECONNAISSANGES. 

dervish horse ; the first sight of them, for me, in the 
campaign. Dervish horse three miles thia side of 
KerrerL 

Stand to your horses ! Prepare to mount ! Mount ! 
This time the plain was fuller, the jingling merrier, 
the bobbing lance-points more alert than ever. On 
and on — a troop through the dense bush, a couple of 
squadrons in line over the open gravel, scrambling 
through a rocky rent in the ground, halting to breathe 
the horses and signal the scouts — ^but always on again. 
Always, by comparison with infantry, we seemed to 
fly, to spread out by magic, to leave the miles behind 
us in a flash. 

But the Dervishes seemed to have vanished, as their 
wont is, swallowed up by dervish-land. We had already 
passed the spot chosen for the night's camp ; we were 
to go on a mUe or two beyond " to make it good," as 
they say. At last we halted. " We shall water here," 
said the Colonel, " and then go home." Then suddenly 
somebody looked forward through his glasses. "By 
Gad, the Grippy cavalry are charging ! " 

" That's not the Grippy cavalry," sings out somebody 
else; "that's our advanced squadron." Mount and 
clatter oflf again. I didn't see them, but it was good 
enough to gallop for ; and now, sure enough, we plunge 
through the mimosa and find the advanced squadron 
pressing on furiously, and the best gentleman rider 
in the army with a dervish lance in his hand. The 
squadron found them in the bush, and galloped at 



THE LINES OF KERKEEI. 253 

them, but they were too quick away. We scrambled 
on, round that bush, down and up that gully, and 
presently came out again into a rising swell of gravel. 
And there were the lines of Kerreri. 

Behind another stretch of thicker bush, perhaps a 
mile through, under the twin hills, was a flutter of 
something white — white splashed with crimson. Ker- 
reri lines beyond a doubt ; only what was the white ? 
Loose garments of horsemen riding through the bush ? 
Tents ? Flags ? Yes ; it must be flags. Already a 
subaltern was picking his way through the bush with 
an officer's patrol. Immediately another strolled away 
to the left ; already one white gunboat had almost out- 
flanked the lines. The whole regiment was now up, 
and dismounted in columns of squadrons in the open. 
When the saddle alone weighs eight stone it is always 
useful to relieve a horse of the man. Colonel and 
majors, captains and adjutants and subalterns, sergeant- 
major and privates to hold the horses, grouped on a 
little knolL Popular the man who had a good field- 
glass. 

Tap, tap, tap, floated down the wind. They were 
beating their war-drum. " Where's Montmorency ? " 
"Gone into the bush, sir." Pop! Very faint and 
muffled, but all hearts leaped : it was the first shot of 
the campaign. And then through the bushes galloped 
a bay horse riderless. Tap, tap, tap : they were still 
beating the war - drum. " What's that to right of 
the flags ? " " Men, sir," says the sergeant - major, 



254 THE EECONNAISSANOES. 

taking his pipe out of his mouth. " I can see them 
with the naked eye." Tap, tap, tap. " "Where's Mont- 
morency ? " " In the there he is, sir, coming 

back." " Very well ; send a man to recall that patrol 
on the left. We've seen where they are : we'll go 
home now, quietly." 

Then in came the smiling subaltern. One man had 
thrown a spear at him and one had loosed ofif an 
elephant gun ; but he had dropped one man off the bay 
horse. There were thirty flags or so : it might mean 
perhaps 3000 men. The patrol from the left reported 
some 200 horsemen striking away to their right rear. 
It might mean retreat : it might mean a flank attack. 
It did not matter which. We had seen ; the recon- 
naissance had succeeded : we walked home quietly. 

The next day, — the army had marched eight miles 
to Wady Suetne — it was the Egyptian cavalry, — nearly 
twice as many of them, and the camel -corps and 
horse-battery besides. This time we started only five 
mile's or so from Kerreri, and before we had gone an 
hour the 21st were in the lines. It had been a retreat 
we had seen the day before ; anyhow, it had become 
so later, when the gunboats shelled the position ; the 
place was empty. We crossed over to the left and 
cantered up expectant, but there was nothing to see. 
Only a few miserable tukls twisted out of bushes: 
Jonah had a better house under his gourd. Kerreri 
had been a fable — a post of observation never meant 
to be held. 



A CITY WOKTH CONQUERING. 265 

But the lines mattered little: it was to the hill 
behind it that eyes turned. Now we were on the 
very brink, and could look over it to forecast the 
great day. Should we see dervishes coming on, or 
should we see dervishes streaming away ? We must 
see something, and we scrambled up, and at last, and 
at last, we saw Omdurman. "We saw a broad plain, 
half sand, half pale grass; on the rim by the Nile 
rose a pale yellow dome, clear above everything. 
That was the Mahdi's tomb, divined from Gebel 
Eoyan, now seen. It was the centre of a purple 
stain on the yellow sand, going out for miles and 
miles on every side — the mud-houses of Omdurman. 
A great city — an enormous city — a city worth con- 
quering indeed! 

A while we looked ; but this was a reconnaissance. 
The thing was to look nearer and see if there were 
any enemy. The Lancers had gone on towards some 
villages along the river, between our hill and another 
three or four miles on. The Egyptian mounted troops 
turned south-westward, inland. We did not altogether 
know what we were going to do or see : perhaps it was 
that dark patch halfway between our line of advance 
and the British, which might be trees or might be 
men. But Broadwood Bey knew very well where 
we were going, and what we were going to see. We 
began to march towards a clump of hills that drew in 
north-westward within three miles of the outskirts of 
Omdurman ; the map calls it Gebel Feried. We came 



256 THE RECONNAISSANCES. 

into swamps deepened by the last night's rain; we 
crossed soft-bottomed streams; it would have been 
desperate ground to be attacked in, but still the leader 
rode on and the heavy columns rode behind him. At 
last we came behind the south-easternmost hill, and 
the squadrons halted and the guns wheeled into line 
and the camels barracked. We went up the hill and 
again we saw. 

Omdurman was nearer, more enormous, more worth 
conquering than ever. A gigantic tract of mud- 
houses; the Mahdi's tomb rising above them like a 
protecting genius ; many other roofs rising tall above 
the wont of the Sudan, one or two with galvanised 
iron roofs to mirror the sunlight. With its huge 
extent, its obvious principal buildings, its fostering 
cathedral, the distant view of Omdurman would have 
disgraced no European capital: you might almost 
expect that the hotel omnibus would meet you at the 
railway station. 

But once more we were on reconnaissance; we 
were there to look for men. In front of the city 
stretched a long white line — banners, it might be; 
more likely tents ; most likely both. In front of that 
was a longer, thicker black line — no doubt a zariba or 
trench. Then they did mean to fight after all Only 
as we sat and ate a biscuit and looked — the entrench- 
ment moved. The solid wall moved forward, and it 
was a wall of men. 

Whew ! What an army ! Five huge brigades of it 



THE khalifa's ARMT. 267 

— a three-mile front, and parts of it eight or ten men 
deep. It was beginning to move directly for our hill, 
and — ^tum, tum, tum — we heard the boom of a" war- 
drum of higher calibre than yesterday's. Now they 
seemed to halt; now they came on. The five corps 
never broke or shifted, the rigid front never bent; 
their discipline must be perfect. And they covered 
the ground. The three miles melted before them; 
our scouts and the Lancers' and theirs were chasing 
each other to and fro over the interval; we saw a 
picket of the Lancers fire. " We'll go back now," 
said the serene voice of the leader. The force formed 
up, and we started on the eight-mile walk between 
ourselves and support. 

The sun had hardened the swamp underfoot, but 
the guns and camels still made heavy going of it. 
We had not been moving twenty minutes before we 
saw a black mass of the enemy watching us from the 
hill whence we had watched them. And their line 
was still coming on, black over a ridge not a mile 
behind us. Tum, tum, tum — they were getting 
nearer; now we heard their shouts, and saw their 
swords brandishing in the sun. Tum, tum, tum — roar 
— brandish — how slowly the camels moved ! The 
troopers in the long column of our outside flank were 
beginning to look over their shoulders. Then the doc- 
tor came galloping like mad from behind. "Where's 
Broadwood ? " — and we saw the rear-guard squadron 
faced about and galloping towards the enemy. The- 

s 



258 THE RECONNAISSANCES. 

bugle snapped out and the troops of the flanking 
regiment whipped round and walked towards the 
enemy too. They were within a thousand yards. 
Now — 

It was only a dismounted trooper they were fetch- 
ing back. The troops turned again, and we walked 
into camp. It was a perfect reconnaissance, — not a 
man lost, not a shot fired, and everything seea. 



XXXII 

THE BATTLE OF OMDURMAN 

Our camp, for the night of September 1, was in the 
village of Agaiga, a mile south of Kerreri Hill. On our 
left front was another hill, higher, but single-peaked 
and rounder — Gebel Surgham. In front the ground 
was open for five miles or so— sand and grass broken 
by only a few folds — with a group of hills beyond. 

The force had formed up in position in the after- 
noon, when the Dervishes followed the cavalry home, 
and had remained under arms all night ; at half -past 
five in the morning, when the first howitzer-shell from 
opposite Omdurman opened the day's work, every 
man was in his place. The line formed an obtuse 
angle ; the order of brigades and battalions, counting 
from the left, was the following : Lyttelton's 2nd Bri- 
tish (Eifle Brigade, Lancashire Fusiliers, Northumber- 
land Fusiliers, Grenadier Guards) ; Wauchope's 1st 
British (Warwicks, Seaforths, Camerons, Lincolns) ; 
Maxwell's 2nd Egyptian (14th, 12th, 13th Sudanese, 



260 THE BATTLE OF OMDURMAN. 

and 8th Egyptian in support). Here came the point 
of the angle ; to the right of it were : Macdonald's 
1st Egyptian (11th, 10th, 9th Sudanese, 2nd Egyptian 
supporting); Lewis's 3rd Egyptian (4th, 15th, and 
3rd and 7th Egyptian, in column on the right flank). 
CoUinson's 4th Egyptian Brigade (1st, 5th, 17th, and 
18th Egyptian) was in reserve in the village. All 
the Egyptian battalions in the front were in their 
usual formation, with four companies in line and two 
in support. The British had six in line and two in 
support. 

On the extreme left was the 32nd Field Battery ; 
the Maxims and Egyptian field-guns were mounted at 
intervals in the infantry line. The cavalry had gone 
out at the first streak of grey, British on the left, 
as usual, Egyptian with camel-corps and horse-battery 
from the right moving across our front. The gunboats 
lay with steam up off the village. 

Light stole quietly into the sky behind us; there 
was n© sound from the plain or the hills before us ; 
there was hardly a sound from our own line. Every- 
body was very silent, but very curious. Would they 
be so mad as to come out and run their heads into our 
fire? It seemed beyond hoping for; yet certainly 
they had been full of war the day before. But most 
of us were expecting instantly the order to advance 
on Omdurman. 

A trooper rose out of the dimness from behind the 
shoulder of Gebel Surgham, grew larger and plainer, 



THE FIKST ATTACK. 263 

spurred violently up to the line and inside. A couple 
more were silhouetted across our front. Then the 
electric whisper came racing down the line; they 
were coming. The Lancers came in on the left ; the 
Egyptian mounted troops drew like a curtain across 
us from left to right. As they passed a flicker of 
white flags began to extend and fill the front in their 
place. The noise of something began to creep in upon 
us ; it cleared and divided into the tap of drums and 
the far-away surf of raucous war-cries. A shiver 
of expectancy thrilled along our army, and then a 
sigh of content. They were coming on. Allah help 
them! they were coming on. 

It was now half-past six. The flags seemed still very 
distant, the roar very faint, and the thud of our first 
gun was almost startling. It may have startled them 
too, but it startled them into life. The line of flags 
swung forward, and a mass of white flying linen swung 
forward with it too. They came very fast, and they 
came very straight ; and then presently they came no 
farther. With a crash the bullets leaped out of the 
British rifles. It began with the Guards and Warwicks 
— section volleys at 2000 yards ; then, as the Dervishes 
edged rightward, it ran along to the Highlanders, the 
Lincolns, and to Maxwell's Brigade. The British stood 
up in double rank behind their zariba ; the blacks lay 
down in their shelter-trench ; both poured out death 
as fast as they could load and press trigger. Shrapnel 
whistled and Maxims growled savagely. From all tht 



264 THB BATTLB OF OMDURMAN. 

line came perpetual fire, fire, fire, and shrieked forth 
in great gusts of destruction. 

And the enemy ? No white troops would have 
faced that torrent of death for five minutes, but the 
Baggara and the blacks came on. The torrent swept 
into them and hurled them down in whole companies. 
You saw a rigid line gather itself up and rush on 
evenly ; then before a shrapnel shell or a Maxim the 
line suddenly quivered and stopped. The line was 
yet unbroken, but it was quite still. But other lines 
gathered up again, again, and yet again ; they went 
down, and yet others rushed on. Sometimes they 
came near enough to see single figures quite plainly. 
One old man with a white flag started with five 
comrades; all dropped, but he alone came bounding 
forward to within 200 yards of the 14th Sudanese. 
Then he folded his arms across his face, and his limbs 
loosened, and he dropped sprawling to earth beside 
his flag. 

It was the last day of Mahdism, and the greatest. 
They could never get near, and they refused to hold 
back. By now the ground before us was all white 
with dead men's drapery. Eifles grew red-hot; the 
soldiers seized them by the slings and dragged them 
back to the reserve to change for cool ones. It was 
not a battle, but an execution. 

In the middle of it all you were surprised to find 
that we were losing men. The crash of our own fire 
was so prodigious that we could not hear their bullets 



"BEARER PARTY THKRB ! " 265 

whistle ; yet they came and swooped down and found 
victims. The Dervishes were firing at their extreme 
range, and their bullets were many of them almost 
spent ; but as they always fire high they often hit. So 
that while you might have thought you were at a 
ahoot of rabbits, you suddenly heard the sharp cry, 
"Bearer party there, quick," and a man waa being 
borne rearward. Few went down, but there was a 
steady trickle to hospital. Bullets may have been 
spent, and Captain Caldecott, of the Warwicks, was 
one of the strongest men in the army; but that 
helped him nothing when the dropping ball took 
him in the temple and came out through the jugular. 
He lay an hour unconscious, then opened his eyes 
with " For God's sake, give me water ! " and died as 
he drank. All mourned him for a smart officer and 
a winning comrade. Most of all the two Highland 
battalions dropped men. The zariba behind which 
they were unwisely posted obliged them to stand, be- 
sides hampering them both in fire and when it came 
to movement ; a little clump of enemy gathered in a 
hole in front of them, and by the time guns came 
up to shell them out, the Camerons had lost some 
twenty-five and the Seaforths above a dozen. 

But loss on this scale was not to be considered 
beside the awful slaughter of the Dervishes. If they 
still came on our men needed only time and ammuni- 
tion and strength to point a rifle to kill them off to 
the very last man. Only by now— small wonder — 



266 THE BATTLE OF OMDURMAU. 

they were not coming on. They were not driven 
back ; they were all killed in coming on. One section 
of fire after another hushed, and at eight o'clock the 
village and the plain were still again. The last shell 
had burst over the last visible group of Dervishes; 
now there was nothing but the unbending, grimly 
expectant line before Agaiga and the still carpet of 
white in front. 

We waited half an hour or so, and then the sudden 
bugle called us to our feet. " Advance," it cried ; " to 
Omdurman ! " added we. Slowly the force broke up, 
and expanded. The evident intention was to march 
in echelon of brigades — the Second British leading 
along the river, the First British on their right rear, 
then Maxwell's, Lewis's, and Macdonald's, with 
CoUinson's stUl supporting. Lewis and Macdonald 
had changed places, the latter being now outermost 
and rearmost; at the time few noticed that. The 
moment the dervish attack had died down the 21st 
Lancers had slipped out, and pushed straight for the 
Khalifa's capital. 

Movement was slow, since the leading brigades had 
to wait till the others had gone far enough inland to 
take their positions. We passed over a corner of the 
field of fire, and saw for certain what awful slaughter 
we had done. The bodies were not in heaps — bodies 
hardly ever are ; but they spread evenly over acres 
and acres. And it was very remarkable, if you 
remembered the Atbara, that you saw hardly a black ; 



THE SECOND ATTACK. 269 

nearly all the dead had the high forehead and taper 
cheeks of the Arab. The Baggara had been met at 
last, and he was worth meeting. Some lay very com- 
posedly, with their slippers placed under their heads 
for a last pillow ; some knelt, cut short in the middle 
of a last prayer. Others were torn to pieces, ver- 
milion blood already drying on brown skin, killed 
instantly beyond doubt. Others, again, seemingly as 
dead as these, sprang up as we approached, and 
rushed savagely, hurling spears at the nearest enemy. 
They were bayoneted or shot. Once again the plain 
seemed empty, but for the advancing masses and the 
carpet of reddened white and broken bodies underfoot. 
It was now twenty minutes to ten. The British 
had crested a low ridge between Gebel Surgham and 
the Nile; Maxwell's brigade was just ascending it, 
Lewis's just coming up under the hill. Men who 
could go where they liked were up with the British, 
staring hungrily at Omdurman. Suddenly from rear- 
ward broke out a heavy crackle of fire. We thought 
perhaps a dozen men or so had been shamming dead ; 
we went on staring at Omdurman. But next instant 
we had to turn and gallop hot -heeled back again. 
For the crackle became a crashing, and the crashing 
waxed to a roar. Dervishes were firing at us from 
the top of Gebel Surgham, dervishes were firing be- 
hind and to the right of it. The 13th Sudanese were 
bounding up the hill ; Lewis's brigade had hastily faced 
to its right westward, and was volleying for life ; Mac- 



270 THE BATTLE OF OMDURMAN. 

donald's beyond, still facing northward, was a sheet of 
flashes and a roll of smoke. What was it ? Had they 
come to life again ? No time to ask ; reinforcements 
or ghosts, they were on us, and the battle was begun 
all again. 

To understand, you must hear now what we only 
heard afterwards. The dervish army, it appeared, 
had not returned to Omdurman on the night of the 
1st, but had bivouacked— 40,000 to 50,000 of them— 
behind Gebel Surgham, south-westward from Agaiga. 
The Khalifa had doubtless expected a sudden attack 
at daybreak, as at Firket, at Abu Hamed, on the 
Atbara; as we marched by night to our positions 
before Omdurman he must have designed to spring 
apon our right flank. When day broke and no 
ynemy appeared he divided his army into three 
corps. The first, under Osman Azrak, attacked the 
village ; the second, with the green banner of Ali 
Wad Helu — with him Abdullahi's eldest son, the 
Sheik-ed-Din — moved towards Kerreri Heights to 
envelop our right ; the third, under AbduUahi himself 
and his brother Yakub, remained behind Surgham, 
ready, as need might be, to envelop our left, or to act 
as reserve and bar our road to Omdurman. 

What befell the first you know ; Osman Azrak died 
with them. The second spread out towards our right, 
and there it fell in with the Egyptian cavalry, horse- 
battery, and camel-corps. When Broadwood Bey fell 
back before the attack, he sent word of its coming to 



BEOADWOOD IN DIFFICULTIES. 271 

the Sirdar, and received orders to remain ontside the 
trench and keep the enemy in front, instead of letting 
them get round the right. Accordingly he occupied 
the Heights of Kerreri. But the moment he got to the 
top he found himself in face of "Wad Helu's unsuspected 
army-corps — 12,000 to 15,000 men against less than 
2000 — and the moment he saw them they began 
swarming up the hill. There was just a moment for 
decision, but one moment is all that a born cavalry 
general needs. The next his galloper was flying with 
the news to the Sirdar, and the mounted troops were 
retreating northward. The choice lay between isola- 
tion, annihilation, or retreat on Agaiga and envelop- 
ment of the right. Broadwood chose the first, but 
even for that the time was short enough. The camels 
floundered on the rocky hillside; the guns dragged; 
the whole mass of dervishes pursued them with a 
pelting fire. Two guns lost all their horses and were 
abandoned ; the camel-corps alone had over sixty men 
hit. As for the cavalry, they went back very hard 
pressed, covering their comrades' retreat and their own 
by carbine fire. If the Egyptian army but gave 
Victoria Crosses, there were many earned that day. 
Man after man rode back to bring in dismounted 
officers, and would hardly be dissuaded from their 
endeavour when it was seen the rescued were plainly 
dead. It was the great day of trial — the day the pick 
of our cavalry officers have worked for through a weary 
decade and more — ^and the Fayum fellah fought like a 



27^ THE BATTLE OF OMDURMAN. 

hero and died like a man. One or two short of forty 
killed and wounded was the day's loss ; but they came 
ofif handsomely. The army of the green flag was now 
on Kerreri Heights, between them and the camp ; but 
with Broadwood's force unbroken behind it, it paused 
from the meditated attack on the Egyptian right. In 
the pause three of the five gunboats caught it, and 
pepper-castored it over with shell and Maxim fire. It 
withdrew from the river towards the centre again : the 
instant a way was cleared the out-paced camel-corps 
was passed back to Agaiga. The cavalry hung upon 
the green flag's left, till they withdrew clean west- 
ward and inland ; then it moved placidly back to the 
infantry again. 

Thus much for the right; on the left the British 
cavalry were in the stress of an engagement, less per- 
fectly conducted, even more hardily fought out. They 
left the zariba, as you heard, the moment the attack 
burned out, and pricked eagerly off to Omdurman. 
Verging somewhat westward, to the rear of Gebel 
Surgham, they came on 300 Dervishes. Their scouts 
had been over the ground a thousand yards ahead of 
them, and it was clear for a charge. Only to cut them 
off it was thought better to get a little west of them, 
then left wheel, and thus gallop down on them and 
drive them away from their supports. The trumpets 
sang out the order, the troops glided into squadrons, 
and, four squadrons in line, the 21st Lancers swung 
into their first charge. 



THB lancers' CHAEGE. 273 

Knee to knee they swept on till they were but 200 
yards from the enemy. Then suddenly — then in a 
flash — they saw the trap. Between them and the 300 
there yawned suddenly a deep ravine ; out of the 
ravine there sprang instantly a cloud of dark heads 
and a brandished lightning of swords, and a thunder 
of savage voices. Mahmud smiled when he heard the 
tale in prison at Haifa, and said it was their favourite 
stratagem. It had succeeded. Three thousand, if there 
was one, to a short four hundred ; but it was too late 
to check now. Must go through with it now ! The 
blunders of British cavalry are the fertile seed of 
British glory : knee to knee the Lancers whirled on. 
One hundred yards — fifty — knee to knee 

Slap ! " It was just like that," said a captain, bring- 
ing his fist hard into his open palm. Through the 
swordsmen they shore without checking — and then 
came the khor. The colonel at their head, riding 
straight through everything without sword or revolver 
drawn, found his horse on its head, and the swords 
swooping about his own. He got the charger up again, 
and rode on straight, unarmed, through everything. 
The squadrons followed him down the fall. Horses 
plunged, blundered, recovered, fell ; dervishes on the 
ground lay for the hamstringing cut ; officers pistolled 
them in passing over, as one drops a stone into a 
bucket; troopers thrust till lances broke, then cut; 
everybody went on straight, through everything. 

And through everything clean out the other side 



274 THE BATTLE OF OMDURMAN. 

they came — those that kept up or got up in time. 
The others were on the ground — in pieces by now, for 
the cruel swords shore through shoulder and thigh, 
and carved the dead into fillets. Twenty-four of 
these, and of those that came out over fifty had 
felt sword or bullet or spear. Few horses stayed 
behind among the swords, but nearly 130 were 
wounded. Lieutenant Eobert Grenfell's troop came 
on a place with a jump out as well as a jump in ; it 
lost officer, centre guide, and both flank guides, ten 
killed, and eleven wounded. Yet, when they burst 
straggling out, their only thought was to rally and 
go in again. " Eally, No. 2 ! " yelled a sergeant, so 
mangled across the face that his body was a cascade 
of blood, and nose and cheeks flapped hideously as he 
yelled. " Fall out, sergeant, you're wounded," said the 
subaltern of his troop. " No, no, sir ; fall in ! " came 
the hoarse answer ; and the man reeled in his saddle. 
" Fall in, No. 2 ; fall in. Where are the devils ? Show 
me the devils ! " And No. 2 fell in — four whole men 
out of twenty. 

They chafed and stamped and blasphemed to go 
through them again, though the colonel wisely forbade 
them to face the pit anew. There were gnashings 
of teeth and howls of speechless rage — things half 
theatrical, half brutal to tell of when blood has cooled, 
yet things to rejoice over, in that they show the fight- 
ing devU has not, after all, been civilised out of Britons. 



THREE AGAINST THREE THOUSAND. 275 

Also there are many and many deeds of self-abandon- 
ing heroism; of which tale the half will never be 
told. Take only one. Lieutenant de Montmorency 
missed his troop-sergeant, and rode back among the 
slashes to look for him. There he found the hacked 
body of Lieutenant Grenfell. He dismounted, and 
put it up on his horse, not seeing, in his heat, that 
life had drained out long since by a dozen chan- 
nels. The horse bolted under the slackened muscles, 
and De Montmorency was left alone with his revolver 
and 3000 screaming fiends. Captain Kenna and 
Corporal Swarbrick rode out, caught his horse, and 
brought it back; the three answered the fire of the 
3000 at fifty yards, and got quietly back to their 
own line untouched. 

Forbearing a second charge, the Lancers dismounted 
and opened fire ; the carbines at short range took an 
opulent vengeance for the lost. Back, back, back they 
drove them, till they came into the fire of the 32nd 
Battery. The shrapnel flew shrieking over them; 
the 3000 fell all ways, and died. 

All this from hearsay; now to go back to what 
we saw. When the Sirdar moved his brigades 
southward he knew what he was doing. He was 
giving his right to an unbeaten enemy ; with his 
usual daring he made it so. His game now was to 
get between the dervishes and Omdurman. Perhaps 
he did not guess what a bellyful of beating the un- 



276 THE BATTLE OF OMDUKMAN. 

beaten enemy would take ; but lie trusted to liis 
generals and his star, and, as always, they bore him 
to victory. 

The blacks of the 13th Battalion were storming 
Gebel Surgham. Lewis and Macdonald, facing west 
and south, had formed a right angle. They were 
receiving the fire of the Khalifa's division, and the 
charge of the Khalifa's horsemen; behind these the 
Khalifa's huge black standard was flapping raven- 
like. The Baggara horsemen were few and ill- 
mounted— perhaps 200 altogether— but they rode to 
get home or die. They died. There was a time 
when one galloping Baggara would have chased a 
thousand Egyptians, but that time is very long past. 
The fellaheen stood like a wall, and aimed steadily at 
the word ; the chargers swerved towards Macdonald. 
The blacks, as cool as any Scotsmen, stood and 
aimed likewise ; the last Baggara fell at the muzzles 
of the rifles. Our fire went on, steady, remorseless. 
The Kemington bullets piped more and more rarely 
overhead, and the black heads thinned out in front. 
A second time the attack guttered and flickered out. 
It was just past ten. Once more to Omdurman ! 

Two minutes' silence. Then once more the howling 
storm rushed down upon us ; once more crashed forth 
the answering tempest. This time it burst upon Mac- 
donald alone — from the north-westward upon his right 
flank, spreading and gathering to his right rear. For 
aU their sudden swiftness of movement the Dervishes 



THE THIRD ATTACK. 277 

Uirougliout this day never lost their formation ; their 
lines drove on as rigidly as ours, regiment alongside 
regiment in lines of six and eight and a dozen ranks, 
till you might have fancied the Macedonian phalanx 
was alive again. Left and front and right and rear 
the masses ate up the desert — 12,000 unbroken fast 
and fearless warriors leaping round 3000. 

Now began the fiercest fight of that fierce day. The 
Khalifa brought up his own black banner again ; his 
staunchest die-hards drove it into the earth and locked 
their ranks about it. The green flag danced encourage- 
ment to the Allah-intoxicated battalions of Wad Helu 
and the Sheikh-ed-Din, It was victory or Paradise 
now. 

For us it was victory or shredded flesh and bones 
unburied, crackling under the red slippers of Baggara 
victors. It was the very crux and crisis of the fight. 
If Macdonald went, Lewis on his left and CoUinson 
and the supporting camel-corps and the newly re- 
turned cavalry, all on his right or rear, must all go 
too. The Second British and Second Egyptian Brig- 
ades were far off by now, advancing by the left of 
Surgham hill ; if they had to be recalled the Khalifa 
could walk back into his stronghold, and then all our 
fighting was to begin anew. But Hunter Pasha was 
there and Macdonald Bey was there, born fighting 
men both, whom no danger can flurry and no sudden 
shift in the kaleidoscope of battle disconcert. Hunter 
sent for Wauchope's first British Brigad@ to fiU the 



278 THE BATTLE OF OMDURMAJSf. 

gap between Macdonald and Lewis. The order went 
to General Gatacre first instead of to the Sirdar : with 
the spldier's instinct he set the brigade moving on the 
instant. The khaki columns faced round and edged 
rightward, rightward till the fighting line was backed 
with 3000 Lee-Metfords, which no man on earth 
could face and live. Later the Lincolns were moved 
farther still on to Macdonald's right. They dispute 
with the Warwicks the title of the best shooting 
regiment in the British army ; the men they shot at 
will dispute no claim of the Lincolns for ever. 

But the cockpit of the fight was Macdonald's. The 
British might avenge his brigade ; it was his to keep 
it and to kill off the attack. To meet it he turned his 
front through a complete half-circle, facing succes- 
sively south, west, and north. Every tactician in 
the army was delirious in his praise : the ignorant 
correspondent was content to watch the man and his 
blacks. " Cool as on parade," is an old phrase ; Mac- 
donald Bey was very much cooler. Beneath the 
strong, square - hewn face you could tell that the 
brain was working as if packed in ice. He sat 
solid on his horse, and bent his black brows towards 
the green flag and the Eemingtons. Then he turned 
to a galloper with an order, and cantered easily up to 
a battalion-commander. Magically the rifles hushed, 
the stinging powder smoke wisped away, and the 
companies were rapidly threading back and forward, 
round and round, in and out, as if it were a figure 



ltACDONAI.D AND HIS BLACKS. 281 

of a dance. In two minutes the brigade was to- 
gether again in a new place. The field in ifront 
was hastening towards us in a whitey-brown cloud 
of dervishes. An order. Macdonald's jaws gripped 
and hardened as the flame spurted out again, and 
the whitey-brown cloud quivered and stood still. 
He saw everything ; knew what to do ; knew how 
to do it; did it. At the fire he was ever brooding 
watchfully behind his firing-line; at the cease fire 
he was instantly in front of it : all saw him, and 
knew that they were being nursed to triumph. 

His blacks of the 9th, 10th, and 11th, the historic 
fighting regiments of the Egyptian army, were worthy 
of their chief. The 2nd Egyptian, brigaded with them 
and fighting in the line, were worthy of their com- 
rades, and of their own reputation as the best dis- 
ciplined battalion in the world. A few had feared 
that the blacks would be too forward, the yellows 
too backward: except that the blacks, as always, 
looked happier, there was no difference at all between 
them. The Egyptians sprang to the advance at the 
bugle; the Sudanese ceased fire in an instant silence 
at the whistle. They were losing men, too, for though 
eyes were clamped on the dervish charges, the dervish 
fire was brisk. Man after man dropped out behind 
the firing-line. Here was a white officer with a red- 
lathered charger; there a black stretched straight, 
bare-headed in the sun, dry -lipped, uncomplaining, 
a bullet through his liver ; two yards away a dead 



282 THE BATTLE OF OMDUEMAN. 

driver by a dead battery mule, his whip still glued 
in his hand. The table of loss topped 100 — 150 — 
neared 200. Still they stood, fired, advanced, fired, 
changed front, fired — firing, firing always, deaf in the 
din, blind in the smarting smoke, hot, dry, bleeding, 
bloodthirsty, enduring the devilish fight to the end. 

And the Dervishes ? The honour of the fight must 
still go with the men who died. Our men were per- 
fect, but the Dervishes were superb — beyond perfec- 
tion. It was their largest, best, and bravest army 
that ever fought against us for Mahdism, and it died 
worthily of the huge empire that Mahdism won and 
kept so long. Their riflemen, mangled by every kind 
of death and torment that man can devise, clung 
round the black flag and the green, emptying their 
poor, rotten, home-made cartridges dauntlessly. Their 
spearmen charged death at every minute hopelessly. 
Their horsemen led each attack, riding into the bullets 
till Hothing was left but three horses trotting up to 
our line, heads down, saying, " For goodness' sake, let 
us in out of this." Not one rush, or two, or ten — but 
rush on rush, company on company, never stopping, 
though all their view that was not unshaken enemy 
was the bodies of the men who had rushed before 
them. A dusky line got up and stormed forward: 
it bent, broke up, fell apart, and disappeared. Before 
the smoke had cleared, another Mne was bending and 
storming forward in the same track. 

It was over. The avenging squadrons of the Egyp- 



THE LAST DERVISH. 283 

tian cavalry swept over the field. The Khalifa and 
the Sheikh- ed-Din had galloped back to Omdurman. 
Ali Wad Helu was borne away on an angareb with 
a bullet through his thigh-bone. Yakub lay dead 
under his brother's banner. From the green army 
there now came only death-enamoured desperadoes, 
strolling one by one towards the rifles, pausing to 
shake a spear, turning aside to recognise a corpse, 
then, caught by a sudden jet of fury, bounding for- 
ward, checking, sinking limply to the ground. Now 
under the black flag in a ring of bodies stood only 
three men, facing the three thousand of the Third 
Brigade. They folded their arms about the staff and 
gazed steadily forward. Two fell. The last dervish 
stood up and filled his chest; he shouted the name 
of his God and hurled his spear. Then he stood quite 
still, waiting. It took him full; he quivered, gave 
at the knees, and toppled with his head on his arms 
%nd his face towards the legions of his conquerors. 



XXXIII 

ANALYSIS AND CRITICISM 

Over 11,000 killed, 16,000 wounded, 4000 prisoners, 
— that was the astounding bill of dervish casualties 
ofl&cially presented after the battle of Omdurman. 
Some people had estimated the whole dervish army 
at 1000 less than this total: few had put it above 
50,000. The Anglo -Egyptian army on the day of 
battle numbered, perhaps, 22,000 men: if the Allies 
had done the same proportional execution at Waterloo, 
not one Frenchman would have escaped. 

How the figures of ' wounded were arrived at I 
do not know. The wounded of a dervish army ought 
not really to be counted at all, since the badly 
wounded die and the slightly wounded are just as 
dangerous as if they were whole. It is conceivable 
that some of the wounded may have been counted 
twice over — either as dead, when they were certain 
to perish of their wounds or of thirst, or else as 
prisoners when they gave themselves up. Yet, with 
all the deductions that moderation can suggest, it was 



AN APPALUNQ SLAUGHTER. 285 

a most appalling slaughter. The dervish army was 
killed out as hardly an army has been killed out in 
the history of war. 

It will shock you, but it was simply unavoidable. 
Not a man was killed except resisting — very few 
except attacking. Many wounded were killed, it is 
true, but that again was absolutely unavoidable. At 
the very end of the battle, when Macdonald's brigade 
was advancing after its long fight, the leading files of 
the 9th Sudanese passed by a young Baggara who 
was not quite dead. In a second he was up and at 
the nearest mounted white ofl&cer. The first spear 
flew like a streak, but just missed. The officer 
assailed put a man-stopping revolver bullet into him, 
but it did not stop him. He whipped up another 
spear, and only a swerve in the saddle saved the 
Englishman's body at the expense of a wounded 
right hand. This happened not once but a hun- 
dred times, and all over the field. It was impossible 
not to kill the dervishes: they refused to go back 
alive. At the very finish — the 11,000 killed, the 
Khalifa fled, the army hopelessly smashed to pieces 
— a band of some 3000 men stood firm against the 
pursuing Egyptian cavalry. " They were very sticky," 
said an officer simply, " and we couldn't take 'em on." 
Later they admitted they were beaten, and came in. 
But except for sheer weariness of our troops, that 3000 
would have been added to the eleven. As it was, they 
outmarched our advance, slipped into Omdurman 



286 ANALYSIS AND CRITICISM. 

before us, changed their gibbas, and looted the 
Khalifa's dhurra. 

Nor was that the end of the sullen resistance of the 
Baggara. Even after they realised that they were 
hopelessly beaten in the field, they relaxed but little of 
their sullen hostility. Probably they were encouraged 
by the Sirdar's moderation in sparing indiscriminately 
all the inhabitants of Omdurman : whether that or 
no, it is certain that from the day of the fight to 
the 8th, the day I came down, it was not safe for 
any white man to go into the city unarmed. I do 
not think any white man was actually attacked, — 
certainly none was killed. But wandering Egyptian 
soldiers were, and it was not until a batch or two 
of francs - tirailleurs had been taken out and shot 
that decent order could be maintained in the town. 
That was natural enough. Omdurman's only idea 
of maintaining order was massacre : how could it 
appreciate mercy ? 

Sy the side of the immense slaughter of dervishes, 
the tale of our casualties is so small as to be almost 
ridiculous. The first official list was this. British 
troops : 2 officers (Captain Caldecott and Lieut. Gren- 
fell) killed, 7 wounded ; 23 non-commissioned officers 
and men killed, 99 wounded. Egyptian army : 5 
British officers and 1 non - commissioned officer 
wounded ; 1 native officer killed, 8 wounded ; 20 non- 
commissioned officers and men killed, 221 wounded. 
Total casualties: 131 British, 256 native— 387. 



OUS LOSSES. 287 

But this estimate, like all early estimates, was under 
the mark. Some of the wounded died — among them a 
private of the Lincolns not previously reported ; others 
were late in reporting themselves. The Egyptian casu- 
alties among non-commissioned officers and men rose 
to 30 killed and 279 wounded. Among the British 
many slight wounds were never reported at all. The 
21st Lancers, especially, according to the testimony of 
their own officers, lost 24 killed or died of wounds, and 
74 wounded. Of the latter, hardly more than half 
came under surgical treatment at all. Such wounds, 
of course, were very slight, and were properly omitted 
from the official list. Still, if you count every scratch, 
the British casualties go up to nearly 200, and the 
Egyptian to over 300. Of the British infantry, the 
Camerons, with a total of 2 killed and 25 wounded, 
lost most severely, as they did at Atbara ; and they 
were again followed by the Seaforths with 2 killed 
and 16 wounded. 

Putting it at its highest, however, the victory was 
even more incredibly cheap than the Atbara. But for 
the rash handling of the 21st Lancers, the mistake of 
putting the British infantry behind a zariba instead of 
a trench, and the curious perversity which sent the 
slow camel-corps out into the open with the Egyptian 
cavalry, the losses would have been more insignificant 
still. The enemy's fire, as always, was too high, and 
the Egyptians in their shelter-trench hardly suffered 
from it at all. Perhaps the heaviest fire of the first 



288 ANALYSIS AND CRITICISM. 

part of the action was borne by CoUinson's supporting 
brigade and by the hospitals. In the second action, 
Macdonald's four battalions suffered most severely of 
any in the field — again, as at the Atbara. 

Among correspondents, the Hon. Hubert Howard, 
acting for the 'Times' and the 'New York Herald' in 
conjunction, was killed by a chance shot at the gate 
of the Mahdi's tomb -^.t the very end of the day. From 
Oxford onward his one end in life had been the woo- 
ing of adventures. He had found them with the Cuban 
insurgents and in the Matabele rebellion, where he 
was wounded in leading a charge of Cape boys. He 
was foredoomed from the cradle to die in his boots, 
and asked no better. Earlier in the day he had ridden 
with the Lancers through their charge ; earlier still he 
had been out with the pickets and jumped his horse 
over the zariba as the dervishes came on to attack it 
No man ever born was more insensible to fear. Ten 
minutes before he was killed he said, " This is the best 
day ol my life." 

Colonel Frank Ehodes, the formally accredited cor- 
respondent of the ' Times,' was shot through the flesh 
of the right shoulder very early in the fight. From 
the very beginning no Sudan campaign has been com- 
plete without Colonel Ehodes, and it must have been 
a keen disappointment to him to miss Omdurmanj 
but he bore that and the wound with his usual hum- 
orous fortitude. Mr Williams, of the 'Daily Chron- 
icle,' had his cheek abraded by a bullet or a chip 



THE khalifa's GENERALSHIP. 289 

of masonry from a ricochet: it was nothing, and he 
made of it even less than it was. Mr Cross, of the 
'Manchester Guardian,' died afterwards of enteric 
fever at Abeidieh. Years ago he had rowed in the 
Oxford Eight, but enteric delights in seizing the most 
powerful frames. Quiet, gentle, patient, brave, sin- 
cere — Mr Cross was the type of an English gentleman. 

However, the battle of Omdurman was almost a 
miracle of success. For that thanks are due, first, 
to the Khalifa, whose generalship throughout was a 
masterpiece of imbecility. Had he attacked us at 
night with the force and impetuous courage he showed 
by day, it was not at all impossible that he might have 
got inside our position. Nothing could have come 
alive up to the Lee-Metfords ; but the Martinis might 
have proved less iiresistible — and once inside in the 
dark his death-scorning fanatics would have punished 
us fearfully. At close fighting they would have been 
as good as we, and far more numerous : if they had 
been met with rifle -fire, we must have inevitably 
shot hundreds of our own men. 

If he had stood in Omdurman and fought as well as 
he fought in the open, our loss must needs have been 
reckoned in thousands instead of hundreds. Instead, 
he chose the one form of fight which gave him no 
possibility of even a partial success. We heard he 
boasted that his men always had broken our squares, 
and he would see if they could not do it again. They 
would have broken us if valour could have done it 

T 



290 ANALYSIS AND CRITICISM. 

but he forgot that the squares were bigger than 
before, were bettelr armed, so far as the British went,, 
and especially that men like the Sirdar and Hunter! 
and Macdonald knew every turn and twist of dervishi 
tactics, and are not in the habit of giving points away" 
to the enemy. 

The Khalifa, therefore, came to utter grief as a 
general. As a ruler he fought harder than many had 
expected of him ; even when the mass of his army 
was dead or yielded, he was ready for one throw 
more. When that failed, he rode for it: suicide 
would have been more dignified, as well as simpler for 
us, but besides suicide there was only flight open to 
him. Perhaps suicide would have been simpler for 
him too in the end. As a ruler he finished when he 
rode out of Omdurman. His own pampered Baggara 
killed his herdsmen and looted the cattle that were to 
feed him. Somebody betrayed the position of the 
reserve camels that were to carry his reserve wives : 
th8 camel -corps brought them in, and with them 
Fatima — the Sheikh -ed- Din's mother — an enormous 
lady, his faithful and candid chief partner from the 
days when he could carry all his property on a 
donkey. Other wives, less staunch, voluntarily de- 
serted him ; his followers took to killing one another. 

He is no more Khalifa. He evaded the pursuit of 
the cavalry, however, joined the Sheikh-ed-Din, who 
had fled by a different route, and struck south-west- 
ward. He may reach his own country, and if, from 



THE BATTLE OF GEDAREF. 291 

an Emperor, he likes to pass into a petty bandit, he 
may possibly have a few months yet before him. But 
his following is too small even for successful brigan- 
dage; and he has earned too general detestation. 
Any day his head may be brought into Omdurman. 
Last month he was the arbitrary master of one of 
the greatest dominions — looking only to extent of 
country — in the whole world. To-day he is merely 
a criminal at large. 

The remainder of his forces took little reduction. 
Major Stuart Wortley had cleared the right bank up 
to the Blue Nile. Luckily for him, the opposition was 
not severe, for most of the friendlies bolted at sight 
of a Baggara, as everybody knew they would. The 
Jaalin, however, behaved well. 

There now remained only one dervish force in the 
field — the garrison of Gedaref, up the Blue Nile and 
on the Abyssinian border. It numbered 3000 men, 
under Ahmed Fadil, the Khalifa's cousin. The reduc- 
tion of this body was left to Parsons Pasha, Governor 
of Kassala, and he executed his task brilliantly. The 
details of the action are not yet known; perhaps 
nobody will ever take the trouble to ask them. The 
main fact is, that Parsons, with the 16th Egyptian 
battalion, the Arab Kassala Eegulars (under two 
British Bimbashis), some camel-corps and irregulars 
—in all 1300 men— attacked Ahmed Fadil's 3000, and 
after three hours' fighting dispersed them. They lost 
700 killed; Parsons's casualties were 37 men killed, 



292 ANALYSIS AND CKITICISM. 

4 native officers and 53 men wounded. Osman Digna 
was believed to have fled in this direction, but no 
word has yet come in about him. We are not likely 
to hear much more about Osman Digna. 

For a point or two of criticism — if the unprofes- 
sional observer may allow himself the liberty — the 
battle of Omdurman was a less brilliant affair than 
the Atbara : on the other hand, it was more com- 
plex, more like a modern battle. The Atbara took 
more fighting, Qmdurman more generalship. Success 
in each was complete and crushing. Omdurman was 
final ; but it occurred to a good many of us between 
10 and 11 that morning that it was just as well we 
had put Mahmud's 16,000 out of harm's way at the 
Atbara. That these were not at the Khalifa's dis- 
posal on September 2nd was one more of his blunders, 
one piece more of the Sirdar's luck. 

The Sirdar would have won in any case: that he 
won so crushingly and so cheaply was the gift of luck 
and the Khalifa. Three distinct mistakes — as has, per- 
haps impertinently, been hinted above — were made on 
our side. Of these the charge of the 21st Lancers was 
the most flagrant. It is perhaps an unfortunate eon- 
Bequence of the modern development of war-correspon- 
dence, and the general influence of popular feeling on 
every branch of our Government, that what the street 
applauds the War Office is compelled at least to con- 
done. The populace has glorified the charge of the 



THE BLUNDER OF THE CHAEGB. 293 

21st for its indisputable heroism ; the War Office will 
hardly be able to condemn it for its equally indisput- 
able folly. That being so, it is the less invidious to 
say that the charge was a gross blunder. For cavalry 
to charge unbroken infantry, of unknown strength, 
over unknown ground, within a mile of their own 
advancing infantry, was as grave a tactical crime as 
cavalry could possibly commit. Their orders, it is 
believed, were to find out the strength of the enemy 
south of Gebel Surgham, report to the British infantry 
behind them, and, if possible, to prevent the enemy 
from re-entering Omdurman. The charge implied dis- 
regard, or at least inversion, of these orders. Had the 
cavalry merely reconnoitred the body of dervishes they 
attacked, and kept them occupied till Lyttelton's 
brigade came up, the enemy would have been 
annihilated, probably without the loss of a man to our 
side. As it was, the British cavalry in the charge 
itself suffered far heavier loss than it inflicted. And 
by its loss in horses it practically put itself out of 
action for the rest of the day, when it ought to have 
saved itself for the pursuit. Thereby it contributed 
as much as any one cause to the escape of the Khalifa. 
For the other two points, General Gatacre, being new 
to zaribas, appears to have throughout attached undue 
importance to them. At the Atbara he squandered 
much of the force of his attack through an over- 
estimation of the difficulty of Mahmud's zariba ; here 



294 ANALYSIS AND CRITICISM. 

he crippled both defence and readiness of offence 
through overestimating the difficulty of his own. A 
zariba looks far more formidable than a light shelter- 
trench such as General Hunter's division employed. 
in truth it is as easy to shoot through as a sheet of 
paper, and, for Sudanis, almost as easy to charge 
through. As for sending out the camel -corps with 
the Egyptian cavalry, it is exceedingly difficult to 
understand why this was done the very day after 
Broadwood's reconnaissance to Gebel Feried had de- 
monstrated their immobility. The truth appears to 
be that it is very difficult to find a place for such a 
force in a general action. When the frontier was 
Haifa, and the war was mostly desert raids and counter- 
raids, nothing could have replaced this corps ; for other 
than desert work it has become something of an 
anomaly. 

These amateur criticisms are put forward with 
diffidence, and will, I hope, be tentatively received. 
Turning to what is indisputable, it is impossible to 
overpraise the conduct of every branch of the force. 
Those of the longest and widest experience said over 
and over again that they had never seen a battle in 
which everybody was so completely cool and set on 
his business. Two features were especially prominent. 
The first was the shooting of the British. It was per- 
fect. Some thought that the Dervishes were mown 
down principally by artillery and Maxim fire ; but if 



THE SHOOTING. 296 

the gun did. more execution than the rifle, it was pro- 
bably for the first time in the history of war. An 
examination of the dead — cursory and partial, but 
probably fairly representative — tends to the opinion 
that most of the killing, as usual, was done by rifles. 
From the British you heard not one ragged volley : 
every section fired with a single report. The individ- 
ual firing was lively and evenly maintained. The 
satisfactory conclusion is that the British soldier will 
keep absolutely steady in action, and knows how to 
use his weapon : given these two conditions, no force 
existing will ever get within half a mile of him on 
open ground, and hardly any will try. 

The native troops vindicated their courage, dis- 
cipline, and endurance most nobly. The sudden, un- 
foreseen charges might well have shaken the nerve of 
the Egyptians and over-excited the blacks ; both were 
absolutely cool. Their only fault was in shooting. 
At almost every volley you saw a bullet kick the 
sand within fifty yards of the firing-line. Others 
flew almost perpendicular into the air. Still, given 
steadiness, the mechanical art of shooting can be 
taught with time and patience. When you consider 
that less than six months ago the equivalent of one 
company in each black battalion were raw dervishes, 
utterly untrained in the use of fire-arms, the wonder 
is they shot as well as they did. Anyhow they shot 
well enough, and in trying circumstances they shot 



296 ANALYSIS AND CBITICISM. 

as well as they knew how. That is the root of the 
matter. 

As for the leading — happy the country which 
possessed a Hunter, a Macdonald, a Broadwood, and 
had hardly heard of any one of them. It has heard 
of them now, and it will be strange if it does not 
presently hear furthes". 



XXXIV 



OMDURMAN 



It was eleven o'clock. Four brigades were passing 
slowly to right and left of Gebel Surgham : the Second 
British and Second Egyptian were far ahead, filmy 
shadows on the eye-searing sand. The dervish dead 
and dying were strewn already over some thirty square 
miles — killed by bullets, killed by shrapnel, killed by 
shell from the gunboats, dying of wounds by the water, 
dying of thirst in the desert. But most lay dead in 
the fighting line. Mahdism had died well If it had 
earned its death by its iniquities, it had condoned its 
iniquities by its death. 

Now on to overtake the Sirdar, to see the city of 
the Khalifa. Even now, after our triple fight, none 
was quite assured of final victory. We had killed a 
prodigious number of men, but where there were so 
many there might yet be more. Probably the same 
thought ran through many minds. If only they fought 
as well inside Omdurman! That would have spelt 
days of fighting and thousands of dead. 



298 OMDURMAN. 

One thing, indeed, we knew by now : the defences of 
Omdurman on the river side existed no longer. On 
the 1st, from Gebel Feried, we had seen the gun-boats 
begin the bombardment, backed by the 37th Battery, 
with its howitzers, on the opposite bank. "We had 
heard since of the effects. " It was the funniest thing 
you ever saw," said a captain of marines. " The boats 
went up one after another ; when we got opposite the 
first fort, ' pop ' went their guns. ' Bang, bang, bang,' 
went three boats and stopped up the embrasure. 
Came to the next fort : ' pop ' ; * bang, bang, bang ' : 
stopped up that embrasure. So on all the way up. A 
little fort on Tuti Island had the cheek to loose off its 
pop-gun ; stopped that up. Then we went on to 
Khartum. Forts there thought perhaps the boats 
couldn't shoot from behind, so they lay doggo till we 
had gone past. They found we could shoot from 
behind." 

S^ far so good. But what should we find on the 
land side ? Above all, should we find the Khalifa ? 
The only answer was to go and see. Four miles or so 
south of Agaiga the yellow streak of Khor Shamba 
marks roughly the northern limit of Omdurman; 
thence to the Mahdi's tomb, the great mosque, and the 
Khalifa's house is a short three miles. The Second 
British Brigade was watering at the Khor — men and 
horses lapping up the half solid stuff till they must 
have been as thick with mud inside as they were out. 
Beyond it a sprinkling of tumble-down huts refracted 



IRK WHITE FLAG. 299 

and heated sevenfold the furnace of the sunlight ; 
from among them beckoned the Sirdar's flag. 

It was about two o'clock when the red flag moved 
onward towards the Mahdi's tomb, heaving its torn 
dome above the sea of mud walls. The red and white 
looked light and gay beside the huge, cumbrous raven- 
banner of the Khalifa, which flew sullenly at its side 
Before the twin emblems of victory and defeat rode 
the straight-backed Sirdar, General Hunter a head 
behind him, behind them the staff. Behind came 
the trampling 2nd Egyptian Brigade and the deadly 
smooth-gliding guns of the 32nd Battery. Through 
the sparse hovels they moved on ; presently they began 
to densen into streets. We were on the threshold of 
the capital of Mahdism. 

And on the threshold came out an old man on a 
donkey with a white flag. The Khalifa — so we 
believed — had fled to Omdurman, and was at this 
very moment within his wall in the centre of the 
town ; but the inhabitants had come out to surrender. 
Only one point the old gentleman wished to be 
assured of : were we likely to massacre everybody if 
we let them in without resistance? The Sirdar 
thought not. The old man beamed at the answer, 
and conveyed it to his fellow-townsmen; on the top 
of which ceremony we marched into Omdurman. 

It began just like any other town or village of the 
mean Sudan. Half the huts seemed left unfinished, 
the other half to have been deserted and fallen to 



300 OMDUKMAN. 

pieces. There were no streets, no doors or windows 
except holes, usually no roofs. As for a garden, a 
tree, a steading for a beast — any evidence of thrift or 
intelligence, any attempt at comfort or amenity or 
common cleanliness, — not a single trace of any of it. 
Omdurman was just planless confusion of blind walls 
and gaping holes, shiftless stupidity, contented filth 
and beastliness. 

But that, we said, was only the outskirts : when we 
come farther in we shall surely find this mass of popu- 
lation manifesting some small symbols of a great 
dominion. And presently we came indeed into a 
broader way than the rest — something with the rude 
semblance of a street. Only it was paved with dead 
donkeys, and here and there it disappeared in a 
cullender of deep holes where green water festered. 
Beside it stood a few houses, such as you see in 
Metemmeh or Berber — two large, naked rooms stand- 
ing jn a naked walled courtyard. Even these were 
rare : for the rest, in this main street, Omdurman was 
a rabbit-warren — a threadless labyrinth of tiny huts or 
shelters, too flimsy for the name of sheds. Oppression, 
stagnation, degradation, were stamped deep on every 
yard of miserable Omdurman. 

But the people ! "We could hardly see the place for 
the people. We could hardly hear our own voices for 
their shrieks of welcome. We could hardly move for 
their importunate greetings. They tumbled over each 
other like ants from every mud heap, from behind every 



A HUGE HAEEM. 301 

dunghill, from under every mat. Most of the men still 
wore their gibbas turned inside out; you could see 
the shadows of the patches through the sackcloth. 
They had been trying to kill us three hours before. 
But they salaamed, none the less, and volleyed " Peace 
be with you " in our track. All the miscellaneous 
tribes of Arabs whom Abdullahi's fears or suspicions 
had congregated in his capital, all the blacks his 
captains had gathered together into franker slavery — 
indiscriminate, half-naked, grinning the grin of the 
sycophant, they held out their hands and asked for 
backsheesh. 

Yet more wonderful were the women. The multi- 
tude of women whom concupiscence had harried from 
every recess of Africa and mewed up in Baggara 
harems came out to salute their new masters. There 
were at least three of them to every man. Black women 
from Equatoria and almost white women from Egypt, 
plum-skinned Arabs and a strange yellow type with 
square, bony faces and tightly -ringleted black hair ; 
old women and little girls and mothers with babies 
at the breast ; women who could hardly walk for dyed 
cotton swathings, muffled in close veils, and women 
with only a rag between themselves and nakedness 
— ^the whole city was a huge harem, a museum of 
African races, a monstrosity of African lust. 

The steady columns drove through the surge of 
people: then halted in lines of ebony statues, the 
open - mouthed guns crawling between them to the 



302 OMDUHMAK. 

front. We had come opposite the corner of a high 
wall of faced stones, a high twenty feet solid without 
a chip or chink. Now ! This was the great wall of 
Omdurman, the Khalifa's citadel. And listen ! Boom 
— boom — a heavy melancholy note, half bellow, half 
wail. It was the great ombeya, the war-horn. The 
Khalifa was inside, and he was rallying the malazemin 
of his bodyguard to fight their last fight in their last 
stronghold. 

Less than 3000 men were standing, surrounded by 
ten times their number, within ten feet of this gigantic 
wall. But for the moment they were safe enough. 
The Khalifa, demented in all he did through these last 
days of his perdition, had made no banquette inside 
his rampart ; and if it was hard to scale, it was impos- 
sible to defend. The pinch would come when we 
went inside. 

One column moved o£f along the street ; another — 
the 13th Sudanese with four guns of the battery — 
away to the left under the wall towards the Nile. The 
road was what you already felt to be typical of Mah- 
dism — pools of rank stagnation, hills and chasms of 
rubble. The guns fell behind to cut their road a bit ; 
the infantry went on till they came down to the brim- 
ming blue river. Here were the forts and the loop- 
holed walls, and here, steaming serene and masterful 
to and fro, were the inevitable gunboats. Cr-r-rack ! 
Three crisp Maxim rounds: the place was tenanted 
yet. 



THKOUGH THE BREACH. 803 

At the corner we come upon a breach — 500 cubic 
feet or so of fissure — torn by a lyddite shell. Over 
the rubble we scrambled, then through a stout double- 
leafed gate, pulses leaping : we were inside. But as 
yet only half inside — only in a broad road between 
another high stone wall on our right and the river 
on our left. We saw the choked embrasures and a 
maimed gun or two, and walls so clownishly loop-holed 
that a man could only get one oblique shot at a gun- 
boat, and then wait till the next came up to have one 
shot at that. We saw worse things — horrors such as 
do not sicken in the mass on the battle-field — a scarlet 
man sitting with his chin on his knees, hit by a shell, 
clothed from head to foot in his own blood, — a woman, 
young and beautifully formed, stark naked, rolling from 
side to side, moaning. As yet we saw not one fighting 
man, and still we could feel that the place was alive. 
We pushed on between walls, we knew not whither, 
through breathing emptiness, through pulsing silence. 

Eound a corner we came suddenly on a bundle of 
dirty patched cloth and dirty, lean, black limbs — a 
typical dervish. He was alive and unarmed, and threw 
up his hands : he was taken for a guide. Next at our 
feet, cutting the road, we found a broad khor, flowing 
in from the Nile, washing up above the base of the 
wall. Four dervishes popped out, seemingly from 
dead walls beyond. They came towards us and pro- 
bably wished to surrender ; but the blacks fired, and 
they dived into their dead walls again. The guide 



304 OMDURMAK 

said the water was not de«p, and a crowd of i-nen and 
women suddenly shooting up from the roar bore him 
out by fording it. Most of these new - reconciled 
foes had baskets to take away their late master's loot. 
We plashed through the water — and here at last, in 
the face of the high wall on our right, was a great 
wooden gate. Six blacks stood by with the bayonet, 
while another beat it open with his rifle-butt. "We 
stepped inside and gasped with wonder and disap- 
pointment. 

For the inside of the Kalifa's own enclosure was 
even more squalid, an even more wonderful teeming 
beehive than the outer town itself. Like all tyrants, 
he was constantly increasing his body-guard, till the 
fortified enclosure was bursting with them. From the 
height of a saddle you could see that this was only 
part of the citadel, an enclosure within an enclosure. 
Past a little guard-house at the gate a narrow path 
ran up the centre of it ; all the rest was a chaos of 
piggish dwelling-holes. Tiny round straw tukls, mats 
propped up a foot from earth with crooked sticks, 
dome-topped mud kennels that a man could just crawl 
into, exaggerated bird's nests falling to pieces of stick 
and straw — ^lucky was the man of the Khalifa's guard 
who could house himself and his family in a mud 
cabin the size of an omnibus. On every side, of every 
type, they jumbled and jostled and crushed ; and they 
sweated and stank with people. For one or two old 
men in new gibbas came out, and one or two younger 



IMPOSING ON THE SAVAGE. 305 

men naked and wounded. When we offered them 
no harm the Khalifa's body-gimrd broke cover. One 
second the place might have been an nn couth 
cemetery; the next it was a gibbering monkey-house. 
From naked hovels, presto ! it turned to naked bodies. 
Climbing, squeezing, burrowing, they came out like 
vermin from a burning coat. 

They were just as skinny and shabby as any other 
dervishes ; as the Omdurinan Guards they were a 
failure. They were all very friendly, the men anxious 
to tell what they knew of the Khalifa's movements — 
which was nothing — the women overjoyed to fetch 
drinks of water. But when they were told to bring 
out their arms and ammunition they became a bit 
sticky, as soldiers say. They looked like refusing, 
and a snap-shot round a corner which killed a black 
soldier began to look nasty. There must have been 
thousands of them all about us, all under cover, all 
knowing every twist and turn of their warren. But a 
confident front imposed on them, as it will on all 
savages. A raised voice, a hand on the shoulder — and 
they were slipping away to their dens and slouching 
back with Eemingtons and bandoliers. The first 
came very, very slowly ; as the pile grew they came 
quicker and quicker. From crawling they changed 
in five minutes to a trot; thoy smiled all over, and 
informed zealously against anybody who hung back. 
Why not? Three masterless hours will hardly wipe 
out the rest of a lifetime of slavery. 

u 



306 OMDURMAN. 

Maxwell Bey left a guard over the arms, and went 
back : it was not in this compartment that we should 
find the Khalifa. We went on through the walled 
street along the river-front; the gunboats were still 
Maximing now and again a cable or two ahead. So 
on, until we came to the southern river corner of the 
hold, and here was a winding, ascending path between 
two higher, stouter walls than ever. Here was a 
stouter wooden gate; it must be here. In this en- 
closure, too, was a multitude of dwellings, but larger 
and more amply spaced. The Sirdar overtook us 
now, and the guns: the gunners had cut their road 
and levelled the breach, and tugged the first gate 
off its hinges. On; we must be coming to it now. 
We were quite close upon the towering, shell -torn 
skeleton of the Mahdi's tomb. The way broadened 
to a square. But the sun had some time struck 
level into our eyes. He went down ; in ten minutes 
it would be dark. Now or never! Here we were 

ft 

opposite the tomb ; to our left front was the Khalifa's 
own palace. We were there, if only he was. A sec- 
tion of blacks filed away to the left through the 
walled passage that led to the door. Another filed 
to the right, behind the tomb, towards his private 
iron mosque. We waited. We waited. And then, 
on left and right, they reappeared, rather draggingly. 

Gone! None could know it for certain till the 
place had been searched through as well as the 
darkness would let it. Next morning some of the 



LOOTING THE KHALIFA'S CORN. 307 

smaller Emirs avowed, that they knew it. He had 
been supposed to be surrounded, but who could stop 
every earth in such a spinny ? He had bolted out 
of one door as we went in at another. 

We filed back. For the present we had missed 
the crowning capture. But going back under the 
wall we found a very good assurance that Abudullahi 
was no more a ruler. The street under the wall was 
now a breathless stream of men and women, all carry- 
ing baskets — the whole population of the Khalifa's 
capital racing to pilfer the Khalifa's grain. There 
was no doubt about their good disposition now. They 
salaamed with enthusiasm, and "lued" most genuinely; 
one flat-nosed black lady forgot propriety so far as to 
kiss my hand. Wonderful workings of the savage 
mind ! Six hours before they were dying in regiments 
for their master; now they were looting his corn. 
Six hours before they were slashing our wounded 
to pieces; now they were asking us for coppers. 

By this time the darkling streets were choked 
with the men and horses and guns and camels of 
the inpouring army. You dragged along a mile an 
hour, clamped immovably into a mass of troops. 
A hundred good spearmen now — but the Dervishes 
were true savages to the end : they had decided 
that they were beaten, and beaten they remained. 
Soon it was pitchy night; where the bulk of the 
army bivouacked, I know not, neither do they. I 
stumbled on the Second British Brigade, which had 



308 OMDURMAN. 

had a relatively easy day, and there, by a solitary 
candle, the Sirdar, flat on his back, was dictating 
his despatch to Colonel Wingate, flat on his belly. 
I scraped a short hieroglyphic scrawl on a telegraph' 
form, and fell asleep on the gravel with a half -eaten 
biscuit in my mouth. 

Next morning the army awoke refreshed, and was 
able to appreciate to the full the beauties of 
Omdurman. When you saw it close, and by the 
light of day, the last suggestion of stateliness vanished. 
It had nothing left but size — mere stupid multiplica- 
tion of rubbish. One or two relics of civilisation were 
found. Taps in the Khalifa's bath ; a ship's chrono- 
meter ; a small pair of compasses in a boy's writing- 
desk, and a larger pair modelled clumsily upon them ; 
the drooping telegraph wire and cable to Khartum ; 
Gordon's old " Bordein," a shell-torn husk of broken 
wood round engines that still worked marvellously ; 
a ^few half -naked Egyptians, once Government 
servants ; Charles Neufeld, the captive German mer- 
chant, quoting Schiller over his ankle-chains ; Sister 
Teresa, the captive nun, forcibly married to a Greek, 
presenting a green orange to Colonel Wingate, the 
tried friend she had never seen before, — such was the 
pathetic flotsam overtaken by the advancing wave of 
Mahdism, now stranded by its ebb. 

The Mahdi's tomb was shoddy brick, and you dared 
not talk in it lest the rest of the dome should come 
on your head. The inside was tawdry panels and 



FILTH AND LUST AND BLOOD. 309 

railings round a gaudy pall. The Khalifa's house was 
the house of a well-to-do-fellah, and a dead donkey 
putrified under its window-holes. The arsenal was 
the reduplication of all the loot that has gone for half 
a dollar apiece these three years. The great mosque 
was a wall round a biggish square with a few stick- 
and-thatch booths at one end of it. The iron mosque 
was a galvanised shed, and would have repulsed 
the customers of a third-rate country photographer. 
Everything was wretched. 

And foul. They dropped their dung where they 
listed ; they drew their water from beside green 
sewers ; they had filled the streets and khors with 
dead donkeys ; they left their brothers to rot and puff 
up hideously in the sun. The stench of the place was 
in your nostrils, in your throat, in your stomach. You 
could not eat ; you dared not drink. "Well you could 
believe that this was the city where they crucified a 
man to steal a handful of base dollars, and sold 
mother and daughter together to be divided five 
hundred miles apart, to live and die in the same 
bestial concubinage. 

The army moved out to Khor Shamba during the 
3rd. The accursed place was left to fester and fry in 
its own filth and lust and blood. The reek of its 
abominations steamed up to heaven to justify ub of 
our vengeance. 



XXXV 



THE FUNERAL OP GORDON 



The steamers — screws, paddles, stern-wheelers — plug- 
plugged their steady way up the full Nile. Past the 
northern fringe of Omdurman where the sheikh came 
out with the white flag, past the breach where we went 
in to the Khalifa's stronghold, past the choked em- 
brasures and the lacerated Mahdi's tomb, past the 
swamp-rooted palms of Tuti Island. We looked at it 
all with a dispassionate, impersonal curiosity. It was 
Suj^day morning, and that furious Friday seemed 
already half a lifetime behind us. The volleys had 
dwindled out of our ears, and the smoke out of our 
nostrils ; and to-day we were going to the funeral of 
Gordon. After nearly fourteen years the Christian 
soldier was to have Christian burial. 

On the steamers there was a detachment of every 
corps, white or black or yellow, that had taken part 
in the vengeance. Every white officer that could be 
spared from duty was there, fifty men picked from 
each British battalion, one or two from each unit of 



THE AVENGERS. 311 

the Egyptian army. That we were going up to Khar- 
tum at all was evidence of our triumph ; yet, if you 
looked about you, triumph was not the note. The 
most reckless subaltern, the most barbarous black, 
was touched with gravity. We were going to per- 
form a necessary duty, which had been put off far, 
far too long. 

Fourteen years next January — yet even through 
that humiliating thought there ran a whisper of 
triumph. We may be slow; but in that very slow- 
ness we show that we do not forget. Soon or late, 
we give our own their due. Here were men that 
fought for Gordon's life while he lived, — Kitchener, 
who went disguised and alone among furious enemies 
to get news of him ; Wauchope, who poured out 
his blood like water at Tamai and Kirbekan ; Stuart- 
Wortley, who missed by but two days the chance 
of dying at Gordon's side. And here, too, were boys 
who could hardly lisp when their mothers told them 
that Gordon was dead, grown up now and appearing 
in the fulness of time to exact eleven thousand lives 
for one. Gordon may die — other Gordons may die 
in the future — but the same clean-limbed brood will 
grow up and avenge them. 

The boats stopped plugging and there was silence. 
We were tying up opposite a grove of tall palms ; on 
the bank was a crowd of natives curiously like the 
backsheesh - hunters who gather to greet the Nile 
steamers. They stared at us ; but we looked beyond 



312 THE FUNERAL OF GORDON. 

them to a large bnilding rising from a crumbling quay, 
You could see that it had once been a handsome edi- 
fice of the type you know in Cairo or Alexandria — all 
stone and stucco, two-storied, faced with tall regular 
windows. Now the upper storey was clean gone ; the 
blind windows were filled up with bricks ; the stucco 
was all scars, and you could walk up to the roof on 
rubble. In front was an acacia, such as grow in 
Ismailia or the Gezireh at Cairo, only unpruned — 
deep luscious green, only drooping like a weeping 
willow. At that most ordinary sight everybody grew 
very solemn. For it was a piece of a new world, or 
rather of an old world, utterly different from the 
squalid mud, the baking barrenness of Omdurman. A 
facade with tall windows, a tree with green leaves — 
the fa9ade battered and blind, the tree drooping to 
earth — there was no need to tell us we were at a grave. 
In that forlorn ruin, and that disconsolate acacia, the 
bones of murdered civilisation lay before us. 

The troops formed up before the palace in three 
sides of a rectangle — Egyptians to our left as we looked 
from the river, British to the right. The Sirdar, the 
generals of division and brigade, and the staff stood in 
the open space facing the palace. Then on the roof 
— almost on the very spot where Gordon fell, though 
the steps by which the butchers mounted have long 
since vanished — we were aware of two flagstaves. By 
the right-hand halliards stood Lieutenant Staveley, 
R.K, and Captain Watson, K.E.E. ; by the left hand 



THE SEAL ON KHARTUM, 313 

Birabashi Mitford and his Excellency's Egyptian 
A.D.C. 

The Sirdar raised his hand. A pull on the halliards : 
up ran, out flew, the Union Jack, tugging eagerly at 
his reins, dazzling gloriously in the sun, rejoicing in 
his strength and his freedom. "Bang!" went the 
"Melik's" 12|-pounder, and the boat quivered to her 
backbone. " God Save our Gracious Queen " hymned 
the Guards' band— "bang!" from the "Melik"— and 
Sirdar and private stood stiff — " bang ! " — to attention, 
every hand at the helmet peak in — " bang ! " — salute. 
The Egyptian flag had gone up at the same instant ; 
and now, the same ear-smashing, soul-uplifting bangs 
marking time, the band of the 11th Sudanese was 
playing the Khedivial hymn. " Three cheers for the 
Queen ! " cried the Sirdar : helmets leaped in the air, 
and the melancholy ruins woke to the first wholesome 
shout of all these years. Then the same for the 
Khedive. The comrade flags stretched themselves 
lustily, enjoying their own again; the bands pealed 
forth the pride of country; the twenty -one guns 
banged forth the strength of war. Thus, white men 
and black, Christian and Moslem, Anglo-Egypt set her 
seal once more, for ever, on Khartum. 

Before we had time to think such thoughts over to 
ourselves, the Guards were playing the Dead March in 
"Saul." Then the black band was playing the march 
from Handel's " Scipio," which in England generally 
goes with " Toll for the Brave " ; this was in memory 



314 THB FUNEKAL OF GORDON. 

of those loyal men among the Khedive's subjects who 
could have saved themselves by treachery, but pre- 
ferred to die with Gordon. Next fell a deeper hush 
than ever, except for the solemn minute guns that 
had followed the fierce salute. Four chaplains — 
Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, and Methodist — 
came slowly forward and ranged themselves, with 
their backs to the palace, just before the Sirdar. The 
Presbyterian read the Fifteenth Psalm. The Anglican 
led the rustling whisper of the Lord's Prayer. Snow- 
haired Father Brindle, best beloved of priests, laid his 
helmet at his feet, and read a memorial prayer bare- 
headed in the sun. Then came forward the pipers 
and wailed a dirge, and the Sudanese played " Abide 
with me." Perhaps lips did twitch just a little to see 
the ebony heathens fervently blowing out Gordon's 
favourite hymn ; but the most irresistible incongruity 
would hardly have made us laugh at that moment. 
And there were those who said the cold Sirdar himself 
couid hardly speak or see, as General Hunter and the 
rest stepped out according to their rank and shook his 
hand. What wonder ? He has trodden this road to 
Khartum for fourteen years, and he stood at the goal 
at last. 

Thus with Maxim-Nordenfeldt and Bible we buried 
Gordon after the manner of his race. The parade 
was over, the troops were dismissed, and for a short 
space we walked in Gordon's garden. Gordon has 
become a legend with his countrymen, and they all 



m GORDON'S GARDEN. 315 

but deify him dead who would never have heard of 
him had he lived. But in this garden you somehow 
came to know Gordon the man, not the myth, and to 
feel near to him. Here was an Englishman doing his 
duty, alone and at the instant peril of his life; yet 
still he loved his garden. The garden was a yet more 
pathetic ruin than the palace. The palace accepted 
its doom mutely ; the garden strove against it. Un- 
trimmed, unwatered, the oranges and citrons still 
struggled to bear their little, hard, green knobs, as if 
they had been full ripe fruit. The pomegranates put 
out their vermilion star-flowers, but the fruit was 
small and woody and juiceless. The figs bore better, 
but they, too, were small and without vigour. Eankly 
overgrown with dhurra, a vine still trailed over a low 
roof its pale leaves and limp tendrils, but yielded 
not a sign of grapes. It was all green, and so far 
vivid and refreshing after Omdurman. But it was 
the green of nature, not of cultivation : leaves grew 
large and fruit grew small, and dwindled away. Ee- 
luctantly, despairingly, Gordon's garden was dropping 
back to wilderness. And in the middle of the defeated 
fruit-trees grew rankly the hateful Sodom apple, the 
poisonous herald of desolation. 

The bugle broke in upon us ; we went back to the 
boats. We were quicker steaming back than steaming 
up. We were not a whit less chastened, but every 
man felt lighter. We came with a sigh of shame : we 
went away with a sigh of relief. The long-delayed 



315 THE FUNESAL OF GORDON. 

duty was done. The bones of our countrymen were 
shattered and scattered abroad, and no man knows 
their place ; none the less Gordon had his due burial 
at last. So we steamed away to the roaring camp 
and left him alone again. Yet not one nor two looked 
back at the mouldering palace and the tangled gar- 
den with a new and a great contentment. We left 
Gordon alone again — but alone in majesty under th« 
conquering ensign of his own peopla 



XXXVI 

AFTER THE CONQUEST 

The cm-tain comes down ; the tragedy of the Sudan is 
played out. Sixteen years of toilsome failure, of toil- 
some, slow success, and at the end we have fought our 
way triumphantly to the point where we began. 

It has cost us much, and it has profited us — ^how 
little? It would be hard to count the money, im- 
possible to measure the blood. Blood goes by quality 
as well as quantity ; who can tell what future deeds we 
lost when we lost Gordon and Stewart and EarlCj 
Burnaby who rode to Kliiva, and Owen who rode 
Father O'Flynn ? By shot and steel, by sunstroke 
and pestilence, by sheer wear of work, the Sudan has 
eaten up our best by hundreds. Of the men who 
escaped with their lives, hundreds more will bear the 
mark of its fangs till they die ; hardly one of them but 
will die the sooner for the Sudan. And what have we 
to show in return ? 

At first you think we have nothing ; then you think 
again, and see we have very much. We have gained 



318 AFTER THB CONQUEST. 

precious national self-respect. We wished to keep oui 
hands clear of the Sudan ; we were drawn unwillingly 
to meddle with it; we blundered when we suffered 
Gordon to go out; we fiddled and failed when we 
tried to bring him back. We were humiliated and 
we were out of pocket ; we had embarked in a foolish 
venture, and it had turned out even worse than any- 
body had foreseen. Now this was surely the tery 
point where a nation of shopkeepers should have cut 
its losses and turned to better business elsewhere. If 
we were the sordid counter-jumpers that Frenchmen 
try to think us, we should have ruled a red line, and 
thought no more of a worthless land, bottomless for 
our gold, thirsty for our blood. We did nothing such. 
We tried to; but our dogged fighting dander would 
not let us. We could not sit down till the defeat was 
redeemed. We gave more money ; we gave the lives 
of men we loved — and we conquered the Sudan again. 
Now we can permit ourselves to think of it in peace. 

The vindication of our self-respect was the great 
treasure we won at Khartum, and it was worth the 
price we paid for it. Most people will hardly per- 
suade themselves there is not something else thrown 
in. The trade of the Sudan ? For now and for many 
years you may leave that out of the account. The 
Sudan is a desert, and a depopulated desert. North- 
ward of Khartum it is a wilderness ; southward it is 
a devastation. It was always a poor country, and it 
always must be. Slaves and ivory were its wealth in 



THE WOKTHLESS SUDAN. 319 

the old time, but now ivory is all but exterminated, 
and slaves must be sold no more. Gum-arabic and 
ostrich feathers and Dongola dates will hardly buy 
cotton stuffs enough for Lancashire to feel the 
difference. 

From Haifa to above Berber, where rain never falls, 
the Nile only licks the lip of the desert. The father 
of Egypt is the stepfather of the Sudan. "With the 
help of water-wheels and water-hoists a few patches 
of corn and fodder can be grown, enough for a dotted 
population on the bank. But hardly anywhere does 
the area of vegetation push out more than a mile 
from the stream ; oftener it is a matter of yards. 
Such a country can never be rich. But why not 
irrigate ? Simply because every pint of water you 
take out of the Nile for the Sudan means a pint less 
for Egypt. And it so happens that at this very mo- 
ment the new barrages at Assuan and Assiut are 
making the distribution of water to Egypt more 
precise and scientific than ever. Lower Egypt is to 
be enlarged; Upper Egypt is, in part at least, to 
secure permanent irrigation, independent of the Nile 
flood, and therewith two crops a-year. This means 
a more rigid economy of water than ever, and who 
will give a thought to the lean Sudan ? What it can 
dip up in buckets fat Egypt will never miss, and that 
it may take — no more. 

As for the southward lands, they get rain, to be 
sure, and so far they are cultivable ; only there is 



320 AFTEE THE CONQUEST. 

nobody left to cultivate them. For three years 
now the Egyptian army has been marching past 
broken mud hovels by the river - side. Dust has 
blown over their foundations, Dead Sea fruit grows 
rankly within their walls. Sometimes, as in old 
Berber, you come on a city with streets and shops — 
quite ruined and empty. Here lived the Sudanese 
whom the Khalifa has killed out. And in the more 
fertile parts of the Sudan it is the same. Worse 
still — in that the very fertility woke up the cupidity 
of the Baggara, and the owner was driven out, sold 
in the slave-market, shipped up Nile to die of Fashoda 
fever, cut to pieces, crucified, impaled — anything you 
like, so long as the Khalifa's fellow -tribesmen got 
his land. In Kordofan, even of old days, lions in 
bad years would attack villages in bands : to - day 
they openly dispute the mastery of creation with 
men. From Abyssinia to Wadai swelters the miser- 
able Sudan — beggarly, empty, weed-grown, rank with 
blood. 

It will recover, — with time, no doubt, but it will 
recover. Only, meanwhile, it will want soime tend- 
ing. There is not likely to be much trouble in the 
way of fighting : in the present weariness of slaughter 
the people will be but too glad to sit down under any 
decent Government. There is no reason — unless it 
be complications with outside Powers, like France or 
Abyssinia — why the old Egyptian empire should not 
be reoccupied up to the Albert Nyanza and Western 



THE FUTUBE BULE. 321 

Darfur. But if this is done — and done it surely should 
be — two things must be remembered. First, it must 
be militarily administered for many years to come, 
and that by British men. Take the native Egyptian 
official even to-day. No words can express his in- 
eptitude, his laziness, his helplessness, his dread of 
responsibility, his maddening red-tape formalism. His 
panacea in every unexpected case is the same. " It 
must be put in writing ; I must ask for instructions." 
He is no longer corrupt — at least, no longer so cor- 
rupt as he was — but he would be if he dared. The 
native officer is better than the civilian official; but 
even with him it is the exception to find a man both 
capable and incorruptible. To put Egyptians, cor- 
rupt, lazy, timid, often rank cowards, to rule the 
Sudan, would be to invite another Mahdi as soon 
as the country had grown up enough to make him 
formidable. 

The Sudan must be ruled by military law strong 
enough to be feared, administered by British officers 
just enough to be respected. Eor the second point, it 
must not be expected that it will pay until many years 
have passed. The cost of a military administration 
would not be very great, but it must be considered 
money out of pocket. The experience of Dongola, 
whence the army has been drawing large stores of 
dhurra, where the number of water-wheels has multi- 
plied itself enormously in less than a couple of years, 
shows well enough that only patience is wanted. The 



322 APTER THE CONQUEST. 

Sudan will improve : it will never be an Egypt, but 
it will pay its way. But, before all things, you must 
give it time to repopulate itself. 

Well, then, if Egypt is not to get good places for 
her people, and is to be out of pocket for administra- 
tion — how much does Egypt profit by the fall of Ab- 
duUahi and the reconquest of the Sudan ? Much. 
Inestimably. For as the master -gain of England is 
the vindication of her self-respect, so the master-gain 
of Egypt is the assurance of her security. As long as 
dervish raiders loomed on the horizon of her frontier, 
Egypt was only half a State. She lived on a perpetual 
war-footing. Her finances are pinched enough at the 
best; every little economy had to go to the Sirdar. 
Never was general so jealous — even miserly — of public 
money as the Sirdar; but even so he was spending 
Egypt's aU. That strain will hencefortk be loosened. 
Egypt will have enough work for five years in the new 
barr|iges, which are a public work directly transliter- 
able in pounds and piastres. Egypt will be able to 
give a little attention to her taxes, which are anomal- 
ous ; to her education, which is backward ; to her rail- 
ways, which are vile. 

Whether she will be able to reduce her army is 
doubtful. The occupation of the banks of the Blue and 
White Nile, to say nothing of the peaceful reabsorp- 
tion of Kordofan and Darfur, would open up some of 
the finest raw fighting material in the world. Frankly, 
it is very raw indeed — the rawest savagery you can 



THE GAIN OF EGYPT. 323 

well imagine, — but British officers and sergeants have 
made fairly drilled troops, fairly good shots, superb 
marchers and bayonet-fighters out of the same mate- 
rial, and they could do it again. To put the matter 
brutally, having this field for recruiting, we have too 
many enemies in the world to aiford to lose it. We 
have made the Egyptian army, and we have saved 
Egypt with it and with our own : we should now make 
of it an African second to our Indian army, and use it, 
when the time comes, to repay the debt to ourselves. 

We have saved Egypt, and thereby we have paid 
another debt. The Khedive is but half a monarch at 
the best : while a hostile force sat on his borders to 
destroy him, and every couple of years actually came 
down to do it, he was not more than a quarter. There 
was plenty of sneaking sympathy with Mahdism in 
Egypt — even in Cairo, and not very far from the 
Khedive's own palace. But for British help the 
sympathisers would long ago, but yet too late, have 
recogiiised their foolishness in the obliteration of 
EgyP^' Egypt alone could by no miracle have saved 
herself from utter destruction by Mahdist invasion. 
We have saved her — and therewith we have paid off 
the purblind, sincere undertakings of Mr Gladstone. 
We undertook to leave Egypt ; we have redeemed the 
promise in an unforeseen manner, but we have re- 
deemed it amply. If we undertook to evacuate the 
old Egypt, we have fathered a new one, saved from 
imminent extinction by our gold and our sword. 



324 AFTEK THE CONQUEST. 

Without us there would have been no Egypt to-day ; 
what we made we shall keep. 

That is our double gain — the vindication of our 
own honour and the vindication of our right to go 
on making Egypt a country fit to live in. Egypt's 
gain is her existence to-day. The world's gain is 
the downfall of the worst tyranny in the world, and 
the acquisition of a limited opportunity for open trade. 
The Sudan's gain is immunity from rape and torture 
and every extreme of misery. 

The poor Sudan ! The wretched, dry Sudan ! Count 
up all the gains you will, yet what a hideous irony it 
remains, this fight of half a generation for such an 
emptiness. People talk of the Sudan as the East ; it 
is not the East. The East has age and colour; the 
Sudan has no colour and no age — just a monotone of 
squalid barbarism. It is not a country ; it has nothing 
that makes a country. Some brutish institutions it 
ha^ and some bloodthirsty chivalry. But it is not a 
country : it has neither nationality, nor history, nor 
arts, nor even natural features. Just the Nile — the 
niggard Nile refusing himself to the desert — and for 
the rest there is absolutely nothing to look at in the 
Sudan. Nothing grows green. Only yellow halfa- 
grass to make you stumble, and sapless mimosa to 
tear your eyes; dom-palms that mock with wooden 
fruit, and Sodom apples that lure with flatulent 
poison. For beasts it has tarantulas and scorpions 
and serpents, devouring white ants, and every kind 



A HIDEOUS IRONY. 326 

of loathsome bug that flies or crawls. Its people are 
naked and dirty, ignorant and besotted. It is a 
quarter of a continent of sheer squalor. Overhead 
the pitiless furnace of the sun, under foot the never- 
easing treadmill of the sand, dust in the throat, tune- 
less singing in the ears, searing flame in the eye, — the 
Sudan is a God-accursed wilderness, an empty limbo 
of torment for ever and ever. 

Surely enough, "When Allah made the Sudan," 
say the Arabs, " he laughed." You can almost hear 
the fiendish echo of it crackling over the fiery sand. 
And yet — and yet there never was an Englishman 
who had been there, but was ready and eager to go 
again. "Drink of Nile water," say the same Arabs, 
" and you will return to drink it again." Nile water 
is either very brown or very green, according to the 
season ; yet you do go back and drink it again. Per- 
haps to Englishmen — haif-savage still on the pinnacle 
of their civilisation — the very charm of the land lies 
in its empty barbarism. There is space in the Sudan. 
There is the fine, purified desert air, and the long 
stretching gallops over its sand. There are the things 
at the very back of life, and no other to posture in 
front of them, — hunger and thirst to assuage, distance 
to win through, pain to bear, life to defend, and death 
to face. You have gone back to the spring water of 
your infancy. You are a savage again — a savage with 
Eosbach water, if there is any left, and a Mauser 
repeating pistol-carbine, if the sand has not jammed 



326 AFTER THE CONQUEST. 

it, but still at the last word a savage. You are un- 
prejudiced, simple, free. You are a naked man, facing 
naked nature. 

I do not believe that any of us who come home 
whole will think, from our easy-chairs, unkindly a| 
the Sudan. 



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